A Day with Jeremy

A pleasant wind from Hangzhou brought a familiar face to Beijing, JEREMY, our Residential Director from the CET program. He visited Caoyin and I at Jiang Ma Ma's restaurant. He said absolutely loved the pho, which I was glad because he lived so far away from the Chaoyang District. As a guest in our city, he even paid the whole bill. Then we went to Qi Jiuba, which I thought was actually a jiuba (bar), but it was the Art District of Beijing. Then we took photos together. At the end, he took us to a coffee shop and bought us smoothies. Actually, at the very end, he accompanied us to the bus to go back to our universities.

I love Jeremy! I haven't had a memorable day in a long time. Was it because he spoke Chinese the whole time? Was it because he kept texting us every five minutes with absolutely hilarious commentary about his misadventures? Was it the topics we talked about? Was it because he paid the bill? Was it because his coming required alot of other small things we had to do? Yeah it was everything.

A topic we spoke about briefly is dating and marrying outside your race. Jeremy's wife is Chinese, so essentially his kids are adorable. He said, even if the guy is ugly, in this case, the caucasian chinese mix will guarantee cute kids. He also never relied on his wife to learn chinese, because that was their agreement before their marriage. He did it on his own, which I fully respect. Before this, or before China, I had this internal bias that I would never date or marry outside my race. Why? Because I was never attracted to, interested in, or curious about other people. That was just my philosophy of life. Then I went to Hangzhou. Wo de sixiang gaibian. Na bufen was probably a bad thing, but you gotta take the good and the bad, and you can't regret your choices. Anyway, who knows maybe I'll date someone older than me who is outside my race. He also gave us advice about choosing the right chinese programs and improving our chinese. It was quick, and avoided all the frustrating "meiyoubanfa" answers.

Jeremy's chinese is superb. Caoyin and I just love listening to him talk because we haven't heard a good chinese speaker in a long time. He's also really funny. We just kept laughing about everything. It was completely irrational and I wasn't even intoxicated. I've actually never been intoxicated. Anyway, the smoothies covering our financial expenditures made each moment enjoyable without any fan nao. It also gave me an excuse to call Jonathan and Steven about tongxinlian and Jeremy's dianhuahaoma.

Sometimes I like being in control of my day, but when good people come, I can't help but have a good time. We need more Jeremy's in this world. It's even better because he came when we least expected it. It's refreshing.