China trip (part 2)!

hey! here’s part 2! anw, about the link moat part in the prev part was actually cancelled at the last minute, no wonder I had no recollection of it! haha, good thing, if not i will be very sad that memory escaped me.

28 OCT Tuesday

woke up slightly later cos we were allowed to. today was different as there was no assembly and thus the shaoxing teachers gave us some leeway. they hold their assembly only on mon every week. no wonder the students are so robust during assembly cos it is only once a week and they give it their all then and then can slack for the rest of the days. haha.

we attended maths, science and music (again) lessons. for maths, it was pretty exciting as the students were given the opportunity to qiang da. and the questions were simple algebraic problems that were no match for me. haha. but I wondering whether the teacher had purposely downgraded the questions so as to not scare us. should be lah, cos shaoxing school had maths as one of the pet subjects, surely their maths standard wasn’t easy peasy.

next up was science. we were having class with students that were of lower standard. in singapore terms, maybe sec 2 or even sec1! maybe the underestimated singapore student’s ability in science. haiz, they think we stupid or what huh! we had to do some science experiment dealing with onion skin. yes the epidermis cells. this is what we did in sec one and they thought we never did… lol, good thing the teacher gave her presentation and instructions in Chinese, if not I might have dozed off. anw, I pity those pure bio students in our midst, they must have been so bored, but I guess they could show off their prowess in this simple activity.

this lesson was kind of horrid for me cos I was sitting beside some idiotic snobbish china student. (we had to pair up with one and sit in rows of four, like our science lab.) and I had to carry out the experiment with her and another pl-china student pair. I forgot who was in the other pair. anw, this snob of a china girl, spoke to me as though I was some stupid person, she enunciated every syllable of her speech and talked as if I was some dumb deaf idiot. anyway, maybe she saw my hearing aids, but who cares! I think im smarter than her lor… she asked me in super slow manner what is my name. I said hui xin and then I ask her hers and she said yu kuai (as in happiness in chinese). I think she was out to make fun of me cos I think I saw something else on her namecard. so be it, yu kuai the madwoman! then she asked me a few more questions, I answered painstakingly and some of her stupid china friends laughed… okay… whatever, sam ang and charissa in front of me told me to ignore her cos she was ‘making fun’ of me.. what the heck and then we started conversing in english, making sure that we spoke super fast so that those brainless china idiots couldn’t understand. after that, that snob went a little quiet for a while.

soon it was time to do the experiment. I discovered that my partner quite sucked at the experiment so I took the reigns. and she had no choice but to praise me for being so good at it. I was saying to myself, ‘of course, snobs don’t do well in life, AND Singaporean students are not to be look down at! what’s more, we are better than u china dorky simpletons and have better character even though we are so much more superior than u!’ I was so pissed. when the lesson was over, I was so happy… that stupid girl! I just had to remind myself that china has the good, the bad and ugly, I had just witnessed the bad and a little of the ugly (cos the girl wasn’t pretty at all!) I just have to be optimistic about the good!

after that, we had music. it was more of rhythm class as we played with drums and clapped rhythms. I saw that snob again and shunned her. yeah, so this class was quite easy for me as I knew music and knew how to read the different durations of the towgay (musical notes).

in the afternoon, we went to the lu xun memorial hall. we basically toured lu xun residence. it was kinda interesting yet frustrating at the same time. it was interesting cos I was smelling lu xun air and was viewing all his possessions. the kitchen, I remember, was really antique and had all the cool equipment. haha. but the tour was a little irritating as there were hordes of tourist there, but the worse were the locals, the shoved and pushed and always formed a human wall in front of us so that we poor pl girls couldn’t really catch a glimpse of the view. but keeping in mind about the good, the bad and the ugly, I reminded myself that the people there were mainly old folks, so I hope that this bad manners of theirs has been washed away in the next generation.

after lu xun, we went back to school to for the happy hour programme. basically it is like our cca kind of activities. we had a ‘gallery walk’ around the art room. we witnessed the art students in action. wow, I was mesmerized by the talent of the students, they were especially good at sketching irregular objects. their work was just in pencil shades, yet they reflected every detail and shadow. I wondered how long did they take to complete a piece of work, I guess it took them a few sessions to do so, wow, their effort is really remarkable.

we ended the gallery walk and proceeded to the calligraphy class. there awaited us students and we had to a take a place between 2 china students and then they will teach us calligraphy. since I had some experience last year during the enrichment classes, I was quite confident writing my name. though I managed to write decent looking characters, the problem was, the strokes were not deep enough and not well defined enough. so when the china friends taught me the thick stroke kind of calligraphy, I stumbled and never could do a good piece of work. and im glad that I had a pair of friendly and helpful teachers. they were more patient and had much better character than that snob earlier that day.

the calligraphy class ended and the teacher gave us each a breathtaking piece of calligraphy work done by the students themselves. it was a prize! we said goodbye, after which we assembled at the conference room where the parents of our buddies would could come to pick us up to our buddy’s home. I was darn nervous!!!!!!! argh, I still can rmb the feeling, my heart wanted to scream so bad! I was so scared of the homestay and so scared of how things would turn out at my buddy’s house. a few parents came and went, until there were about half of the no. of pl left, my buddy’s mom came. clad in black from top down she looked exactly like some high class tai tai/businesswomen, but she at the same time, she looked sooooooooooo freaking scary, u could pass her as a mafia’s woman. boy, I wanted to pee in my pants. why did my buddy’s mom look so different from her. lol.

anyway, my buddy said that she was cycling home and that meant I would sit in the car alone with her mom. I told myself, tahan 2 nights and then I will be liberated!!! of course, I had to be polite, so I introduced myself to mrs xu (xu is yi jia’s surname, so I shall call her mom mrs xu here, cos she’s to scary looking to be called mamma xu) and then she told me that she knew alr. anq, I could feel that she was trying to accommodate me well and be caring for me. and her car was as black jeep! why I was seeing everything black? is it some foreboding? and her jeep was super high, so high that my unstretchable jeans combined with my short legs made it hard to mount her jeep. the platform I could say was at my waist. so frigging high that I quite embarrassed myself by taking a little bit of time just to get up. in the car, we talked, but a little only. mrs xu asked me what I liked to eat and asked how many siblings I had. I said 2 older sisters and then she said, ‘oh. yi jia is the only child!’ I so much wanted to be smartly spontaneous and to inject a little of humour to break the ice by saying, ‘yeah, the one child policy, nvm! I can become yi jia’s sister these days.’ of course, nvr managed to put them in chinese words. n the last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself in front of this seemingly haughty woman, so I just smiled and said yes yes….. btw, the traffic conditions were terrifying. thank goodness mrs xu’s car was big, so many cars gave way to us. there even was a point of time when mrs xu’s jeep was the lone vehicle against the flow of traffic and was in the middle of 2 streams of the other cars going in opposite directions on both sides! it was an ugly sight, and not to mention, frightening too!

when we reached the house (it was like an apartment building, or large condo in sinagpore terms), I had to come down from the jeep so that mrs xu could park her car. when I was going down, my shoe got stuck in the underneath of the stupid seat. I so embarrassed myself! mrs xu was understanding and she said slowly slowy, and smiled. while mrs xu parked in her garage, yi jia came bounding back on her bic. when I entered the house, I realized that my buddy was somewhat wealthy. they had a homemaker, a mini gym, a juccuzi bath, a study room for her dad which had a piano, an attic that was dedicated to her dog (my buddy loves dogs and has a dog, but it was residing somewhere else, maybe she has another house!) and my buddy had 2 rooms conjoined together for her use. she gave a choice of which room I preferred. I choose the room which had red bed sheet and a red blanket on the bed. the other room had blue. i choose this way cos there wasn’t much of a difference between the 2 rooms and picked the one that looked more appealing to me. haha, I like red!

it was time for dinner. the dinner wasn’t great… was a little too salty. the homemaker was some old ah ma probably wanting to earn some money during her retirement years. I was much more comfortable with her as she smiled all the time, whereas mrs xu frequently stiff smile reminded me of some cold and ruthless mafia woman. lol, I dunno why I felt that way, maybe I had built a barrier against her since I first saw her. I was scared of her. but I really could feel her effort in trying to make me feel welcomed.

after dinner, mrs xu and yi jia planned to bring me around the lu xun place (which was just a stone’s throw from their house) but since I had visited it in the afternoon, we decided to take a walk about the periphery,

before going out, yi jia and I used the com for a while. there, I realized that she knew vitas and loved his shrill and falsetto voice! I loved that of him too! so we discovered a few od our common interests. I let her listen to coldplay’s viva la vida and she was quite surprised I liked this kind of songs, she had probably never heard them before.

yi jia and I talking about ourselves. i learnt that she liked music and loved dramas too. then she asked about me, about my family, hobbies and likes. there, she got so interested in me cos I had musical background and was quite ‘cool’ cos I was like an ‘all rounder’, knowing sports and music and loving maths and sciences. I told her that I knew how to play the piano, guitar, recorder and handbell (I doubt she had a clue what it was) to impress her, cos I wanted to make her hold me in some admiration to make up for my poor Chinese. n I succeeded, she was very interested in me after that and asked what grade I was in for piano, I said 8, and then she got all excited and insisted that I perform for her on piano when we got back. actually, she wanted to go back just then, so that she could hear me perform asap. lol, she was so eager. she told me that she had learnt piano when she was young but only for 1 month cos she was too busy and had not time given that she had to be in school till 5.

back at home, I played for her some of my exam pieces and then I played cannon in d. she was so happy and made me perform for her mom. haha, I made a few mistakes here and there cos I was so nervous performing before mrs xu. after that, I suggested dropping by at melodi’s buddy’s home. yi jia said it was a good idea and she said she would check if they were home. I thought she might phone them, instead, she went to her kitchen and shouted over. she reported that there was no reply, but we could try.

so along with mrs xu, yi jia and I went to melodi’s buddy’s (I forgot to ask her name) house which was just one block away. when we were at the door, it was opened and there was commotion inside. I thought whoa, maybe melodi’s buddy’s is so hospitable that she even invited her extended family to welcome melodi. instead, a shocker was in stall for us! after melodi’s buddy’s mother gave us ‘mittens’ to wea over our shoes to save us the trouble of taking them off. I realized to my horror that the teachers were visiting melodi’s buddy’s home! the teachers were both from pl and shaoxing combined, and the camera man was there too!!! I saw melodi and she looked a little traumatized by the attention. lol, she looked so cute, sitting beside mrs lee on the sofa while the teachers were bombarding her on how she was etc. lol! when I entered the house, I greeted the teachers and then fled to melodi for ‘solace’. lol, I nvr knew I was inviting myself into this situation by coming to the house. melodi and I conversed like long lost friends, thankful that we finally had someone to speak english to. melodi showed me her room and it was pretty much like mine, the same conjoined room story. lol, we were so excited being together and likewise, my buddy was with melodi’s buddy, chit chatting away. lol, and we hid from the limelight till the teachers commanded us out to eat fruit. I ate I grape and then poor melodi was presented something bigger although she was very full. it was something like an apple and she could not bite it even after a few attempts, thanks to her braces that forbade her open her mouth too widely. lol, it was a sight seeing her desperately trying to bite to no avail. after that, we had a group photo with the teachers on the sofa. the 2 pairs of buddies stood on the sofa, I rmb being a little conscious of the fact that I was still wearing my shoes, but realized that I was wearing mittens. lol.

after that, the buddies suggested going over to yi jia’s house to play for a while. yi jia’s mom said okay, for an hour. yay! I was so excited and so was melodi. haha

at yi jia’s house, I played more piano for melodi and her buddy. my buddy was so excited to show off her talented buddy. I asked melodi whether she knew how to play the piano, she was a little embarrass and said no. she lamented that she did not have any talents besides maths and was very flustered whenever her buddy’s family asked her cos she knew that shaoxing was famous for music and the arts. haha, I had to console her a little. she added that it was an irony that her name’s melodi. and we laughed. btw, melodi’s taking the exact same combi as me and is going to 3A2! except for the higher Chinese part, she’s quite similar to me! and I realized that with melodi, I was more natural in conversing in Chinese with my buddy and melodi’s buddy. after that, we went to the attic where there was rusty metal swing which was actually for her dog but melodi and I sat on it. lol. I was having so much fun joking around with everyone.
later when everyone was a little tired. melodi and her buddy went home. then I went to shower and had some trouble with it. I couldn’t figure how to turn on the hot water, so I showered in cold water, and when I got out, I was a little chilled, but I survived. mrs xu noticed that I was cold and then she apologized to me for not adjusting the shower. lol, and then she said that she would do it the next day for me. haha. then I read my bible and went to sleep.

whoa! I’ve talked so much on one day! it was a really eventful day that’s why. so this shall be part 2! part three present the rest of the trip. or maybe a day or 2 if my posts are too long.