The kitchen is the common room on our floor. In it I have met my Chinese neighbors (Jessica and Jinjing), their friend Marvin (also Chinese), Eric (from Cameroon), Akil (from India), Justin (another American). I got to talk with Jessica a lot during dinner, and Akil and Marvin came in while I was making tea. It was fun just hanging out, mostly playing with English words and their equivalents in other languages. We went around saying “thank you” in as many different languages as we could, and then Jessica said, “In Chinese, it’s very easy” and she said it. Akil and I looked at her in dead silence. To our tone-deaf ears, it wasn’t easy at all! We tried it anyway and it was quite funny.

I finally met Felicity today—from Oklahoma, also a medievalist, though a historian—and I’ve got to run or I’ll be late meeting her for the Christian Union’s “After Dark Jazz Cafe.” Ciao!