We’re melting!

Everyone knows the weather in New England changes from minute to minute! Well, I suppose if you’re Chinese and/or visiting the United States for the first time as, well, all, of my teachers are, you have a good excuse. It’s either boiling hot, muggy with the fervent hope of a rain to break the fever infecting everyone with a sickening discomfort, or a mild-temperature posing as autumn weather. With the Big Apple in the mind of every newcomer to America, our teachers sadly found themselves not so well armed against the many faces of a Middlebury summer. Except, it seems, in the case of the mighty umbrella.

Having a certain notion of how things normally run at Middlebury during the school year (which, when rainy, includes a lot of wet rain jackets piled around the dining halls entrance bench), I was mildly amused at the state of the dining hall’s entrance way during our first rainstorm. Only now was I able to capture it (sadly not so well, as a friend’s camera phone was my only means of 拍照片) on film.

From what I gather, umbrellas are somewhat of a culturally significant item in China. There is, of course, the “rain umbrella” or “雨伞” as well as the “sun umbrella”/ “parasol” or “阳伞”. Stereotypically speaking, there’s the little paper umbrella in festive drinks, the shoddy “made-in-China” umbrella that, when breaks, improperly refolds, or otherwise has issues, elicits the simple phrase “haha well it’s from China…”, and, of course, the elegantly designed umbrella that becomes more than just a barrier between the carrier and the inclement weather.

Well, having journeyed past the sea of umbrellas, I decided I had to eat something to compliment the weather. Soup? Definitely. But, this was no ordinary ladle of the Atwater’s salty brew. This was my own creation, modeled after the teachers so unsatisfied by bland, American food. All that’s necessary for a delicious and comforting of soup, apparently, is a little soy sauce, pepper, red pepper, a nice, thick hot sauce, veggies of any kind, and water. One trip to the microwave later you have instant (but not pre-packaged) soup!! It was quite delicious, if I may say so myself.

So there it was. My rainy day experience. Having ogled the umbrellas and sipped the soup I must now return to the more mundane task of actually learning the language that brought me here in the first place.