There is a down side to all this lovely warm weather, you know. I'm sitting here without a sweater with all my windows open. The sun is streaming in cheerfully, a gentle breeze occasionally caressed my cheek, and if I don't try to look too far into the distance, I hardly notice the pollution. But alas, the loss of cool weather means I can no longer use my porch as a refrigerator. Now if I want cold juice, I'll have to store in the in the first floor kitchen -- and is cold juice really worth the trip up and down six flights of stairs? Probably not.
Speaking of juice, let me tell you about the kind I'm trying today. It's by a company I recognized, having found them online last year. They have a most memorable name -- Wa ha ha. It's just as funny in Chinese as in English. Anyway, I felt like some lemon, and saw this "lemon juice drink." Now, I have to admit, I can't read most of the ingredients. Actually, I was proud that I could find the list of ingredients. I see that it contains 12% juice, which I felt was pretty standard for lemonade, but lacking nutritional information, I had no idea whether this "lemon juice drink" contained sugar. While I think you'd be hard pressed to find lemon water that lemony without sugar in the US, this is China. I ate a green pea popsicle two days ago -- I can't take anything for granted. But considering my personal life philosophy is "if life gives you lemons, eat them or get scurvy" I felt I could deal with whatever flavor my new juice threw at me (side note: its name is Hello-C, in English writing. It comes in lemon and grapefruit flavors. Apparently, it's healthy. So there was a point against containing sugar). Besides, it was 3 kuai, so if I couldn't drink it, I'd only wasted fifty cents.
So, you ask. What does Hello-C lemon taste like? Well, if my taste buds aren't lying to me, it tastes exactly like Countrytime lemonade. You know, like we have at events in the summer -- warm, sickly sweet, totally-fake-tasting lemonade. It would probably be much better cold. Alas, warm weather.
Speaking again of the RIDICULOUSLY nice weather (really, I can't get over it), it has a wonderful effect on my mood. As you may know, I have an awful tendency toward melancholy, home-sickness, and general non-enthusiasm. This was much the case at the end of classes today, as I left the school building, but one blast of the outside air and there was a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Then I rounded the corner and squeezed past the gatehouse just as a little girl, maybe 4 years old, and her mother turned in from the street. The little girl was eating a rapidly melting creamsicle-like thing in that adorable way of little kids -- which is to say it was dripping all over her hand and she didn't care. I was slightly in front of them (one of the upcoming posts shall be on the subject of the relative walking speeds of Chinese, Mainers, and the rest of the world) and the little girl quite clearly and loudly says to her mother, "Look! A foreigner." Hmmm. I'm the only foreigner on the street right now. . . I barely made it inside the dormitory before I cracked up. Oh, little kids, I love them so. Tact is just not saying true stuff, after all.
On that note, I am in much too good a mood to finish my homework right now. Today's topic is terminal liver cancer and human euthanasia -- how can I possibly read about that when the birds are chirping cheerfully outside my window (OK, fine. It's an electric screwdriver. Close enough)? I shall post new photos to facebook instead.
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