Calligraphy & Tea Appreciation

Hihi!

You must be wondering why I didn't post anything yesterday right? The thing is, there is nothing much to talk because we had lectures for the whole day.

However, one interesting thing about yesterday was when Jovin, Shan hui and I went to get our dinner. We decided to buy wraps from the wrap boy :) on impulse, I told the lady owner who is most probably the mum: "老板娘,我的朋友觉得你的儿子很可爱." (Auntie, my friend aka Jovin thinks that your son (wrap boy) is very cute)

Jovin immediately started blushing like mad and Shan hui and I were laughing like mad. At first the lady boss was shocked, but after that she said how honored and happy she is to know that we (or jovin for that matter) thinks wrap boy is cute. After that I asked if he could take a photo with Jovin and he agreed! Jovin was literally squealing and jumping for joy I tell you. He's really really cute. We found out a couple things about him: 1. He's the same age as us. 2. He's born in April. Shan hui and I are planning to go back and ask for his name haha! We're not crazy okay, we're just helping Jovin out :)

Okay back to the topic about today. We had calligraphy and tea appreciation lessons this morning. I learned abit of both when I was in Japan for my cultural exchange trip in secondary school. However, Japan's culture is different from China's culture. For example, China has a lot of different types of tea leaves from 绿茶 (green tea),黑茶(black tea),红茶(red tea) and 白茶 (white tea) whereas Japan mainly uses matcha (green tea) for their tea ceremonies. There are also different ways for making the different teas. The temperature of the water, the amount of times you wash the leaves and the different tea utensils you use all depends on what type of tea leaf you are using. It was really interesting and enriching because I get to appreciate the gracefulness of the tea-maker and learn to enjoy nice tea. The directors of Ngee Ann also came to visit us during this time and they were equally intrigued by the lady conducting the lesson.

We had calligraphy next. The way the teacher held the brush was different from the way the Japanese hold their brushes. It was a new discovery for me. Thereafter, the teacher explained the different strokes and how to use the brush to create the certain angle and thickness of the strokes. We went to our seats to try it out for ourselves. I should say I did a relatively okay job but Jovin was just playing around. We ended up playing tic tac toe on the newspaper haha! Ms Chuah tried to write our names and it was really really nice. She's really talented.. She can sing very well and she can do nice calligraphy.

I had lunch after that with my girls and Wen Kai. I tried 盖饭 which is like a sauce based dish on top of the rice. I had mushroom with pork slices. They even had cucumber in it and it tasted really good.

Went to the dance studio opposite our hostel with Jovin to dance. Feel so much better after sweating it out through dancing. As I didn't bring shorts with me, I wasn't too keen in running at the track field. Just nice Jovin didn't feel like running either, so we went to ask if we could use the dance studio. The person-in-charge at the gym said yes! We were super happy haha :) I should say we danced to our heart's content. And, we should be going back next week before we left.. If only we asked sooner.

I went out for street food with Jovin and Shan hui for dinner. I tried the 豆皮 sold here but it doesn't taste as yummy as the one I had during the one-day tour.

Tomorrow is my three gorges dam 3D2N trip!! Feeling kinda excited for it actually :) we'll be leaving in the afternoon and will take around 4 hours to get there. I won't be posting from Friday to Sunday so miss me till then! :)

Rest well and sweet dreams!

Xoxo
Zayneeer