So the whole matter of getting a flight was resolved by my forceful mother (I think she yelled at quite a number of airport front desk personnel people) and I flew first to Washington, D.C., then to Hartford, Connecticut and got picked up in a white Smith van.
Made friends/bonded with a group the first day because we took a trip downtown. There's this nice shop called Faces and everything was super expensive but I saw a pair of nice toe socks and they were light blue with buttered toast cartoons all over then and I had an urge to have those socks in my life. But I didn't. Then we had bubble tea and I also bought hair dye and dyed my hair along with two other people (there's now a tinge of red in it under the sunlight lol but doesn't show under normal lighting.)
For some reason, whenever I smile with my lips closed I have this little ... weird twist at the right side of my mouth.
See.
But I just look smug and self-satisfied in this picture so...
I guess if you want a dorm room tour you're just going to have to vidchat me.
After the whole "dyeing already dyed black hair doesn't work" thing, I want to bleach my bangs now, sort of like Kai's blonde extension phase...
something like that... haha it might look weird but whatever. Going into town today with friend (Michelle, I met her literally three days ago and I love her she's adorable. Plus she says I'm funny LOL)
Anyways Michelle was part of the group that I bonded with and now I do stuff outside of class with her (no classes together x___x) and it's nice.
Monday was first day of classes... I really like the creative fiction class because she gives us time to free write and do lots of exercises to stimulate our creativity. We also did lots of workshopping, giving each other feedback on their writing. Memoir writing is okay... I also have the same teacher, Tamar Adler, for food writing, and that class is fun haha. I can't really write food writing, but man I can eat. Did I mention I like the food here? It's so good. Except for lunch. I live off the salad bar for lunch because I am a picky eater and much of the lunch looks unpalatable for some reason lol.
Tuesday much the same. Except the weather was weird af and it was hot and sunny, then hot and rainy, then cold and storming, then hot and sunny again wtf. I went looking for the gym to go swimming and I was clutching an umbrella the entire time (thank you, mother, for insisting that I bring an umbrella) and got halfway soaked by the time I found it heh. Swimming was nice. Turns out while I was swimming everyone else had a fire drill WTF so lol I forgot to sign out (when you're not in your dorms or dining hall or classes you need to sign out and tell people where you're going) and then they were looking for me.
Wednesday... workshopped my piece! if you want to read my short story go to "read more" c:
and bye so I can oovoo with jmak lol.
Ani’s mother was fond
of telling an anecdote about how when a four-year-old Ani had wanted an ice
cream cone from the man selling on the corner of the street, she hadn’t asked
her mother. She had made tiny doll clothes and sold them to her friends and
classmates and by the next week, she had enough money to buy ten cones.
Not that she could really become any more independent
than she already was. Sixteen year later, she was in Hong Kong, renting her own
apartment, working at the café across the street, and majoring in Fashion
Merchandising at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She was also getting started
on her collection of cats with a brown tabby named Penn, whom she could
tolerate better than other people. Other people tended to chatter about inane
things, and Ani preferred solitude and the company of a few select people to
crowded parties or social gatherings. In this way, she liked being alone, but
not lonely, so the hustle and bustle of lively Hong Kong suited her very well. Sometimes
she got tired of it all – work, study, and the occasional internship – and
often as not, ended up falling asleep in her chair curled up besides the open
window with a book, a cup of cold green tea, and Penn, enveloped in the city’s
sounds and smells.
But even her solitary lifestyle couldn’t completely
remove her from other people. To get to and from the university, she had to
take the subway, and it was always overcrowded with commuters travelling to and
from different parts of the city. One
morning, she was distracted because Penn had somehow managed to knock over an
entire bookshelf of books, and she lost track of the time. When she finally
glanced at her watch, she had fifteen minutes before her first class. There was
no other choice – she would have to take a taxi. Pulling on her black combat
boots and picking up her books, she bid goodbye to a chastised Penn and walked
out of her apartment building. Once on the street, she looked around but didn’t
see the bright red body of a Hong Kong taxi anywhere. How strange, she thought, and in that moment, her phone began to
play “眼泪也如雨的下” and she held
it up to her ear and answered in the same fluid motion. “Hello?”
“Hello. If you might lend me ten minutes of your time, I
will guarantee that you will be handsomely rewarded.” The unfamiliar voice was
undeniably male, smooth and unctuous, and instantly suspicious. Ani immediately
hung up. Within a few seconds, as she waited for a taxi to appear, her phone
rang again. “There will be no taxis until we understand each other.” Without
even waiting for the man to finish his sentence, Ani hung up again and walked
to the subway station.
The man didn’t try to call again.
As Ani waited at the subway station for the next train to
arrive, she looked around hesitantly, the hand not burdened by fashion design
books and textile samples trembling slightly against her side. The whole thing was
peculiar and very much unexpected, and the rational part of her doubted that
the mysterious caller could actually control public transportation. So why was
she so unsettled by this event? She shouldn’t be feeling as uneasy as she was over
this small hiccup in her day, a clichéd anonymous phone prank, but despite her
logic a sense of foreboding persisted in hanging around the edges of her mind.
Every time she glanced nervously around the strangely deserted station, the
prickly feeling that someone was watching, lurking behind her, washed over her.
She took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. It
seemed like the trains didn’t feel like running today. Alright. Everything was
alright. Her first class was already almost halfway over anyways, might as well
get back to the apartment and make a cup of green tea. Tea could make any weird
situation seem better, Ani had found, and hopefully this would be no different.
She inhaled deeply again, then climbed back up the stairs into the once-again
crowded street.
Stepping into the apartment building lobby, a flicker at
the edge of Ani’s peripheral vision caught her attention, and she immediately
turned around and scanned her immediate surroundings. Her right hand was now a
mini-earthquake as it hung limply at her side, and she grasped her books in
both arms to quell her overactive nerves. She needed a smoke, or many cups of
caffeinated green tea, or Penn. Coincidences, she reminded herself. Very weird
and unsettling coincidences, but they were still coincidences.
As she waited for the elevator at the end of the hall,
she noticed that the middle-aged sour-faced lady who usually manned the front
desk was conspicuously absent. She was the only one in the lobby, which usually
wouldn’t have bothered her at all, but with the circumstances…. The ding of the elevator scattered her skittish
thoughts, and she stepped in, clearing her mind. The elevator seemed to take an
eternity to reach the fifth floor, but it gave Ani time to compose herself and
consciously repeat calming things in her head. Cigarettes, green tea, Penn. Cigarettes,
green tea, Penn.
Ani
stepped out of the elevator, headed down the hallway, took a look at what was
nailed onto her apartment door, and started screaming silently.
Penn’s
face smiled back gruesomely at her, the dark crimson blood from his severed
head making its way in slow rivulets down the once-pristine white paint.
Janis you should become a writer I think this is excellent
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