When this post goes live, I’ll be in my first class of my last semester of college! I don’t feel prepared for it. There was a lot more I wanted to check off my list before winter break ended. But I had the random urge to binge The Vampire Diaries during my last weekend in Beijing, so productivity went to shiz. The only good thing that may come of it is that maybe I’ll be adjusted to the time zone already. I don’t have a lot of time to recover from jet lag because I’ll have arrived in Philly at 10PM the night before my first day of classes. Well, here goes!
Work
My coworker bought me bubble tea! :’) I had been proofing his personal statements for grad school and checking his English, since I’m a native English speaker and he isn’t, since I had extra time at work, and since I love editing writing. As a thank you, he surprised me with bubble tea. Even my coworkers who I haven’t known for very long know I love bubble tea haha.
Another one of my coworkers gifted me some loose-leaf tea. She had gone back to school the previous week to take some kind of test, and then came back to work the following week bearing gifts. It was a kind of tea specific to the area around her school. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will!
Family
I pissed off my little brother one night because I was disrupting his gaming, but only because he had homework to do that he hadn’t yet finished. I admit that I was being a little annoying. But also, he should have been doing his homework. He’s used to being home alone and getting around to homework however late he wants and staying up to finish it however late he wants. But he’s only a high school frosh and shouldn’t be staying up to do homework yet. He can wait until he’s an upperclassman to do that.
Anyways, after I pissed him off, I knew I had to come up with a better way to get him to do his homework. A day or two later, I tried a different approach. Instead of forcing him to do homework, I invited him to a homework session with me; I just so happened to get homework from my Penn class, which started 1.5 weeks ago. He was a lot more open to doing homework then. We sat at a table at home together, I played some music, we had milk tea, and we did our homework. It felt pretty good actually.
The music I played was Dua Lipa. Her music video for “IDGAF” came out recently, which I found from Youtube’s trending page; I also knew her songs “No Rules” and “Scared To Be Lonely,” so I was curious to hear the rest of her music and played her self-titled album. My little brother recognised the same songs and then asked me who the artist was. I’ve officially hooked him (and me) to Dua Lipa. My dad also likes Dua Lipa now LOL.
I also sucked my family into watching The Vampire Diaries with me, but I don’t know if they’re actually into it haha. (Though they do sometimes get shocked or annoyed or ask questions about what’s going on, so maybe they’re invested in the show. I think it’s a show they don’t mind watching if it’s on but wouldn’t choose to watch on their own.) I’m not even sure if I’m into it. Lie. It’s a guilty pleasure. (Damon!)
School
Penn started 1.5 weeks earlier than my school did. I would have came back earlier, but I had an internship in Beijing that I needed to stay at for as long as possible. Within those 1.5 weeks I missed at Penn, I missed two sessions of the same class. But thankfully, I didn’t actually miss much. The professor uploads his lecture slides onto the class blog and posts all the assignments and readings on there too. Plus, I have a friend in that class, so I’ve been texting her for updates. I noticed that not all the students posted their first assignment to the blog, so I’m patting myself on the back for submitting my assignment in on time and being up to date with the class despite having been away. I wonder when the rest of my classmates are planning post their assignment though…
How was your week?