twirling
i realised today that i'm not really doing the whole exchange thang properly. you think? maybe you're right after all, and the real reason i'm on exchange is to learn how to be a housewife. some people seem to think so.

jus. says:
ok wats the food like?
cannot be better than singapore rite?

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
the food is v good
and i generally eat alot of veg/porridge which i cook at home haha.

jus. says:
haha.
boring.
u cook porridge?

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
yup

jus. says:
i see ur training for ur future life as a wife

growie chroeie (the plant version) says:
yup im training for life as jon lau's wife...
poor jon lau...
he has to eat porridge and vegetables
AHHAHAAA

jus. says:
nvm
he likes bland food
ur perfect for each other
HA

your boyfriend, andrea :)

***
i was shamelessly excited last sunday when jolie's cousin brought us to a supermarket in 朝阳区 (chao2 yang2 qu1), chaoyang district (a.k.a District with Many Foreigners), which had shelves upon shelves of groceries all labelled in english.

and a chilled food section containing pats upon pats of butter, from lurpak to anchor (cheaper than in singapore!) to irish butter and president (no scs though), sold in 227g blocks. not that i'm a big fan of butter, but the mainland chinese seem averse to dairy products in general and butter is impossible to find at any supermarket near us. the mini-mart downstairs only sells it in sad 100g blocks, wrapped in gold foil with a picture of a cow on the front, the words 黄油 (huang2 you2) and BUTTER printed in large red letters. turn the block around and there is a haphazard description, in chinese, of where it was manufactured.

it was exciting and oddly comforting all at once, being in jenny lou's (name of abovementioned supermarket) - honestly, nothing that i've seen so far on my travels in china has come close to inspiring such strong feelings in me, besides maybe a weird number flashing as my phone rings, indicating that jon or my mother is calling me - and then there will also be feelings of dread and worry as i answer the phone, because once i'm out of beijing i have no more free incoming international calls.

some of the best times i've had on exchange so far, i think, are during my thursday law on international sales, finance and carriage classes. each class is four periods long, and each period is 45 minutes. which of course means we are Extremely Bored, Restless and Distracted by the time the first period ends. i will invariably end up sitting next to jinni somewhere near the back of the classroom, and while john shijian mo ploughs through the convention on contracts for the international sale of goods, article by article, in his heavily accented english, we will talk nonsense and write notes to each other and doodle and complain about how we're very bored.

for instance, thursday was my go-out-with-adele day before i came to beijing, so today i was thinking about how if we were both in singapore we could've gone for a movie and a cheap $10 manicure. so i held up my nails for jinni's inspection and whispered eh my nails this length can manicure or not, or need longer?

which prompted jinni to write vain! queen! on the piece of paper on which we were carrying out a conversation, and to start a List of That Which Indicates that Chloe is Actually Secretly Very Vain. i then proceeded to draw a crown for myself, to which she added a face and hair, and then she started drawing on the piece of paper with my cool green pencil highlighter, the usual flower-cloud-heart-smiley-face combination.

it's just like being back in secondary school, and there's even a bell for us to count the minutes off one by one, and they are everlasting.

in case you were interested, i cut my nails last night, so, no, as of now they have been judged as unfit for a manicure.

also, i've only ever been for one pedicure in my entire life and that was only because there was a foot-shin-calf massage involved.

furthermore, paul usually volunteers to buy milk tea with pearls after the first period. if he feels like it, he'll even cross the road to get it from my favourite franchise, 街客 (jie1 ke4) - i previously mentioned that i braved a sandstorm to purchase a cup. i'm already on hello-smile-how-are-you terms with the server there.

i treasure every long bus ride home from school, my mp3 player at a volume which can be heard just above the roar of the bus engine, faye wong and a*mei playing over and over again, and again. singing honestly and heartbreakingly tenderly about life and love, songs you can get lost in because they're real in all senses of the word; produced in an era when technology was less advanced and midi tracks uncommon.

none of the others like window seats, so i'm free to take them and stare out at the suddenly-green trees and wide expanse of sky. the trees really did turn green very suddenly, just last week they were still rather bare.

there is nothing like it, and i think that must be the best and nicest thing that's happened to me on exchange so far.

another nice thing, among the other nice things, is that i'm Owning jon at text twirl. you can also challenge me on facebook if you wish.

i am the walrus

falling asleep after one of the most severe cases of food-poisoning you've had in a long, long, time is an extremely trying process, to say the least. i had my room door closed because xiaoyun and jinni were watching tv in the living room, and i was lying on my bed in complete darkness when all these strange memories suddenly started coming back to me.

like singing the lion sleeps tonight in jc and jingjie coming in with a lone LION! after in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.

actually, that's the only thing i remember remembering. the rest of the time i was forced to listen to traffic and to the sounds of a jackhammer, at two-forty in the morning. who uses jackhammers at that hour, i ask you?

i'm now sitting on my bed finishing a bowl of cold oatmeal, thankful that i feel better. still a little strange tummy-wise, but better.

and i've changed my flight home to july the 8th :) what a difference a week makes.

church on sunday

this morning, after xiaoyun stepped out from the bathroom, i made to move towards it so i could use the toilet but she stopped me.

cannot use! it's flooded! she held her arms up as if to prevent me from going in.

sure enough, as i made to move towards the bathroom door, i could feel the top (fake parquet) layer of floor shift, and bubbles appeared at the part where it joined to the frame of the bathroom door. there were even bloop bloop bubble sounds.

***
paul and i have been attending the government-run church, 海淀堂 (hai3 dian4 tang2), which is about five bus stops away from our apartments. i think it's a presbyterian church, and the service isn't much different from a traditional church service back home, except that it's in chinese, and the congregation is extremely enthusiastic about saying amen.

after every sentence of prayer, and sometimes after every verse of the responsive reading (depending on which verses we're reading responsively), there will be very loud AMENS! resounding left-right-in-front- behind us.

i sometimes wonder whether everybody knows what they're saying amen for, or whether they say it because they think it's the correct and right thing to do, and everybody else is saying it. it's almost as if they were at a communist political rally, cheering for everything a political leader standing on stage says, regardless of whether they've properly understood it or not. . .

. . .but then i think about how china's experienced a spiritual vacuum for such a long time, and it is heartening to know that her leaders are becoming more open to the idea of religion, and some of her people's lives have been filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit.

perhaps it's no wonder they say amen so loudly and so often.

yesterday was a momentous day: i managed to understand the entire sermon, and take notes, all in chinese.

a nice way to start the day

i woke up this morning to a Veritable Avalanche of facebook wallposts to and from shumin, a longish private facebook message from abigail, and, finally, to shannon being online and on skype - although i had no webcam so he had no chance to laugh at my just-out-of-bed hair. he had one though, so i got to take one look at his hair (before i decided to close the webcam window).

he recently won a competition where the contestants had to make dresses out of bedsheets, and his creation is currently still on display (i think) at centrepoint. go visit it if you have the chance to.

and i KNEW the guys wouldn't meet up without SOMEONE continually harrassing them to do so. quents if you're reading this it's time for some island creamery. though guys eating ice cream together seems the teensiest bit gay.

***
last night we had dinner at a cosy bar called lush, and we were waiting for happy hour before ordering drinks so paul couldn't quite bring himself to finish his burger at the speed he wanted to because he was feeling thirsty.

happy hour finally rolled around, and after our frozen lime margaritas arrived (probably the best i've seen and therefore the first i've tasted, it didn't disappoint) he took a few sips, and proceeded to give his beef burger a few pats before picking it up and taking a few bites out of it.

he put it down again when he realised we were all looking at him in amusement.

err, paul, why did you pat your burger? jinni asked.

he looked rather shocked that we'd noticed, then he just shrugged and said err i just patted it lah.

after taking a few more bites from the burger, he said after all, it's a beef patty right?

***
every friday night at 五道口 (wu3 dao4 kou3), the happening centre of our district (海淀区 (hai3 dian4 qu1)), an entire stretch of pavement will be filled with people selling things illegally, wares displayed on canvas sheets, ready to be packed up in an instant if the police come.

jinni and i have already contemplated helping xiaoyun sell off the clothes she bought on a whim and doesn't quite like anymore in this manner, except that we're lacking a canvas sheet.

there will also be people selling puppies, and i saw kittens being sold for the first time last night. they were so small and cuddly and furry and cute (a girly response, after all). we keep wanting to bring one home because we don't want to think about what will happen to them if they don't get sold, but we're leaving in three months or so so it wouldn't be a very wise idea.

i like cats. meow meow.