"The years of youth, we can't help ourselves, just because of the burning dreams in our minds, the years of youth, and the stray career, taking this time, rushing like flowing water." With the turmoil of leaving home to stay in the United States, Xu Wei's lyrics have been echoing in my ears. It has been more than a week since I came to the Bloomington School of Law at Indiana University in the United States. These few days have been spent both physically and psychologically. After a week of tossing, I have basically settled down. After finishing the jet lag, clean up your mood and talk about your feelings.
About living
The apartment I live in is called Campus Walk, located in Downtown Bloomington, a 10-minute walk from the Law School. The rented house here is not furnished, so the room was empty when I first arrived. I spent 20 US dollars to buy an extra mattress from a Chinese classmate in the opposite dormitory, spread it directly on the floor, and then lay on it, thus starting my long-term bedless life in the United States.
I spent the next few days collecting furniture. Why is it called "collection"? I will make an explanation here. First of all, it is almost impossible to go to the store to buy brand new furniture. Because even though the dollar is falling all the way now, as a Chinese student who is not wealthy, we can't escape the fate of silently "multiplying by 7" in our hearts when looking at the price of items in the store. The only consolation is that a colleague who went abroad last year wrote "multiply by 8" on his blog.
If you buy brand-new furniture, the number obtained by multiplying by 7 is even more psychologically harmful than the actual consequences. So we usually buy second-hand furniture by posting posts on the school website. But the problem also followed. The school area is very large and I don't have a car, so if the other party does not deliver the free shipping, this transaction will not be fulfilled at all. But this problem was quickly solved perfectly. Because we found that furniture can actually be collected.
I remember when I was little, when I was noisy and self-willed, the old people would always tell me stories to coax me: There is a place where I can pick up all kinds of furniture and even TV sets on the street at will. When I was young, I was full of curiosity and yearning for this story. I always imagined another world at the end of the ocean. I always thought that brave sailors were real men.
After growing up, I worked hard for my ideals, and gradually ignored the news of my father, mother and hometown. Finally, I slowly discovered that the world is far less beautiful than I imagined when I was a child, slowly, slowly without feeling, slowly, slowly the heart becomes iron. I stand at the fork in the road that I must face every day, and I miss the innocent and beautiful little happiness...
However, after a few days in Bloomington, I was surprised to find that since I was a child, I had been living in all kinds of beautiful but false statements about the world constructed by adults. I finally found one thing that was the same as that of adults to this world when I was a child. The statement coincides with the fact that in this small town called Bloomington, furniture can be collected by hard-working international students themselves.
The Americans in this small town always seem to be moving, and every time they move, they don’t seem to like to take the furniture away. Click "FREE", or "YOU CAN TAKE ANYTHING YOU WANT". When I was worrying about buying all kinds of furniture, such abandoned furniture kept popping up around me. So, in just a few days, I collected all kinds of furniture, and there was a lot more. A small home was built just like this. The stories I heard in my childhood turned out to be reality.
About eating
Although the consumption in this small city of Bloomington is cheaper than that in big cities, and there are many restaurants with different national flavors, we have habitually "multiplied by 7" in our hearts when we see any list price. Eating outside, even if it's just fried rice, is still a more luxurious thing.
If you buy pizza from the supermarket and bake it yourself, it’s very cheap. And the pizza here tastes pretty good, so we mostly eat pizza. Fortunately, the pizza in the supermarket here has a wide range of flavors and varieties, which can be eaten in rotation. Although eating this thing every day is really boring, but when I think about it in China, I used to think that eating Pizza Hut is a relatively advanced thing. Now I am away from home and go out to send me away. Thousands of miles away, I still have Pizza Hut every day. , What else can't hold on?
It is worth mentioning that there is a Chinese restaurant called Lucky, which is famous far and wide. The very individual boss and wife of the proprietor have made countless Chinese and foreign tourists linger in an endless stream. The characteristics of this restaurant are as follows:
1. The sturdy boss and wife. The boss and the proprietress are very fierce and very tempered, and they are scary to look at. His voice is also very loud, and he always shouts at customers when communicating, and never speaks softly.
2. Eating Chinese food in this shop, there is no menu, no unit price. Usually, the customer thinks of a dish freely, and then asks the boss if he can make it today. If he can, he will make it immediately. If he can’t, he will think of another one. In many cases, even the boss said, we are now doing ×××, just eat this, and then no one of the guests dare to raise objections, just like the guest. And the price is always quoted by the boss according to the mood of the day, so every time we come here, we don’t know what we come for, but we have to ask the boss what we can eat today.
3. The boss will never come to tidy up the table. The whole shop consists of two people, the owner and the wife, one for cooking and the other for collecting money. All the tableware in the store is disposable. After eating, the owner will loudly order the guests to throw the plates and bowls into the trash can because they hate to clean up the table and wash the dishes.
4. Cash only, no tips. Almost all purchases in the United States are credit cards, but here only cash is accepted and credit cards are not accepted. In fact, I think they are not thorough enough on this point. Since they have such a personality, they simply don't charge US dollars and only accept RMB, or they can just get a machine to print the banknotes with their own avatars and issue them by themselves. In addition, tips are required everywhere in the United States, but here they carry forward the Chinese tradition and do not charge a penny tip, praise!
Moreover, the taste of their dishes is very authentic. I thought that even on the streets of Chongqing where food and beauties are gathered, if you eat their dishes, they will feel very delicious.
Thanks to such a sensual and sexy Chinese owner, this store has attracted countless Chinese and foreign regulars from Bloomington. Many local Americans are willing to come over and be severely "ravaged" and "abused" by the boss and the proprietress for a taste of the Chinese food here, and then leave contentedly after eating and drinking.
About the environment
The campus of Indiana University is very large and beautiful. Almost all department buildings are ancient buildings with a history of more than 100 years. The campus is full of trees, flowers, and running squirrels and elk. Walking here, there is a feeling of walking in the painting.
At around 7 o'clock in the morning every day, I will be awakened by the sounds of various birds. I like to sleep late in the country. I always have insomnia in the early morning. I feel that it is a sin to sleep in such a beautiful morning. I can't help but walk out of the house to feel the nature of this long-lost morning.
Every community in this small city is like a well-designed resort; every street is like a carefully crafted pedestrian street, which looks like artificial carvings, but in fact it is completely natural. Americans here usually start to work lazily around 10 o'clock, leave work at 5 o'clock, and demonstratives at every turn feel that work is too tiring and demand to reduce working hours. So when I go out in the morning, the street is almost empty.
Walking alone in this quiet American town, feeling the morning scenery, feeling the fragrance of birds and flowers, this is my perfect life. I seem to have walked into the Garden of Eden depicted in Milton’s epic poem "The Lost Garden." "The morning air is so sweet/The rising morning light is so sweet/The first bird's song is so nice/The sun brings joy/When it just sprinkled golden light on this lovely ground/It illuminates the grass, trees, fruits, flowers/ I saw a piece of dew crystal shining..."
In the afternoon, many Americans who didn't know where they came from all of a sudden appeared on the street, playing piano, singing, drinking and having fun in the bar or grass on the roadside. Bloomington at this time, from a quiet town, suddenly became noisy.
