BBQ Juice

Sounds a bit strange, doesn't it? Well it tastes even stranger! One of the Chinese students in my class, Kui, took a few of us to his favorite restaurant. We drove to San Gabriel. Apparently, there is a very large Chinese population there. He ordered everything for us, including this BBQ Juice. Obviously, it's not really BBQ Juice, but that's what my friend and I decided to call it after our first swig.

Kui told us that he ordered some juice for us to try. When the waitress brought it to the table, it looked like a pitcher of Coke. We took our first sip and looked at each other. We asked Kui what kind of juice it was, but he didn't know the name of the fruit in English. It was a sweet juice with a smoky finish. One of our other classmates told us that the fruit is mixed with several other juices and made into a concentrate. We took another sip and decided that it was not only mixed with other juices, but with liquid smoke too.

I wish I could remember all of the names of the dishes that he ordered for us, but alas, I do not. We had dumplings, soup, chicken, fish and some cold noodles. Everything was so delicious and spicy! He said that he would bring us back whenever we wanted, and we could try other things. He was excited to take us to a restaurant that had the cuisine of Northern China; he's from Beijing. He said that we should go to Beijing to film our "Semester 1" films. I was like, "If you're paying, then my passport is ready. I'm down." Haha. We'll see what happens.

Well...Today Sucked

I hope that I don't have to say this again during the next two years; but today sucked. I woke up, happy to take on the world, but that feeling didn't last forever.

In my acting class, our teacher asked us to bring in a scene that we wrote, and we would act it out in class. I took in a scene from the pilot episode of the tv show I wrote when I first left Philly. I was actually really excited about it. The teacher picked two students that I wouldn't have necessarily picked to do the scene, but I was still excited. The acting was not what I wanted, and I tried to direct the scene. The teacher stopped me and said, "I think this might just be a case where the writing is bad." Needless to say, that stung a little. So my jolly little mood quickly became not so jolly.

Then, in my directing class, we screened the movies that we shot over the weekend. We all went into this screening not feeling proud of our projects, and then our teacher just reiterated what we already new: our movies sucked. One by one he broke them all down and told us to redo them. It was just so disheartening.

So, worst day ever. And here's hoping that we never have another day like this one. I'm laying in bed, watching "Bad Teacher". This movie is lifting me up. :)

Pulled Over On Foot

This morning, my roommate and I were happily walking to school, when we came to a stoplight. Not just any stoplight, it was the last stoplight before we reached our destination. As we stood there at the light, we saw that there were no cars, and the light for the other side had already begun to turn yellow. So, rather than wait the 5 seconds, we opted to just cross the street. No sooner than we'd gotten to the other side, did we hear someone calling on a PA, "Miss, miss." Mind you, it was 9 in the morning, so I hear this voice and I'm wondering where it came from. I turned around out of pure curiosity. Had I known it was a motorcycle cop and he was talking to me, I certainly would have faked def and kept walking. He would have had to follow me. Instead, I turned around and he called me over. He was also calling my roommate back at the same time. (We'd split after we crossed the street, because we were heading to separate buildings.)

We both walk back over there, and I was seriously confused. We crossed in the crosswalk. What could he do to us? It wasn't jay-walking. He proceeded to explain to us about the large amounts of complaints that they get about people almost being hit at that intersection, AND then, he proceeded to write us individual tickets. The whole time, I was thinking, "Are you serious right now?" Who writes two students tickets for crossing the street?! And then, ANOTHER motorcycle cop shows up! I said to him, "Did you call for backup?!" The whole thing was so freaking ridiculous. And no matter what we said to him, he was dead set on writing us tickets. The best was that after he gave me mine, he started to work on my roommate's, and she says, "I just moved to this country. I didn't know." I almost burst out laughing, but that would have ruined her chances, so I held a straight face.

Needless to say, I'm gonna have to go to court to fight this thing. If you can turn right on a red light while driving, then surely you can cross the street on a red light if no cars are coming! When did I learn that it was illegal to cross the street if the crosswalk didn't say walk? In drivers ed? Or is it just common knowledge, and you don't know that until you get a ticket for crossing on a red hand. I just considered the hands and the walk to be guidelines, suggestions or recommendations. Apparently I was wrong!