Day 7: Laughter is the Best Medicine

In the spirit of my second article about my interpersonal relationships, I decided to tell a few stories of me bonding with my peers.

Higher Notes

Yesterday the highlight of our "Connect back to Shanghai" was a friend, who has asked to remain anonymous. He came up with a light poem, which he attached to a song he made up. Soon, we began to fit tunes to that poem. The tunes started off light, with tunes like "Happy Birthday" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". I provided vocals for him, and he began to attach the words. The evening tunes began to grow wilder, with "Star Wars", "Super Mario", and the "Harry Potter Theme Song", and the room began to fill with his voice, my vocals, and the chortles of laughter from us all. The song had to do with Baba, which was a local dessert and delicacy. At the end, I dished out the grand finale: "PPAP". Try as we might, we could not seem to get past the first line without collapsing in laughs. Soon, we were truly ROFL (Rolling on Floor Laughing), and then I could not seem to get PPAP out of my head for the rest of the night

Milk Tea

Yesterday Austin Z. and I decided to pay a visit to the coffee shop, in which we split a cup of milk tea. The owner was friendly and chatty, and we talked about the recent policy of the shutdown of the businesses near Lake Erhai, while he made us the tea. At many points in the tea-making, he showed us exactly what to do. He let us smell the fragrant tea that was the base of the milk tea, and he proudly told us how the milk tea was his own recipe. Smugly, I drank the milk tea, and thought of my many friends in Shanghai who were big fans of milk tea. Too bad I can't send milk tea over the mail...

Naming the Stans

And today, Sunny Q. and I were walking back from dinner when we started talking about geography. He challenged me to name all the countries that ended with the phrase "Stan". So off I went: Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan... I had taken a course of Model Un and Advanced Geography two summers ago, and I was brimming with confidence. But after the five stans, I found myself against a brick wall. So talking as we went back, he reminded me of the last two stans. They happened to by Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan...

So Microcampus provides us an unique opportunity to bond with people I would not have bonded with otherwise. This helps me underSTANd the importance of reaching out and taking advantage of opportunities.
