My room doesn’t have a refrigerator or a watercooler, which is pretty rough in such a hot summer. My school has both, so I fill my water bottle there with drinking water and slices of orange or lemon, and stick it in the fridge to become cold. (It’s totally fine to carry a 4-inch pocket knife into a school here, just bring your own napkins as well.) I bought a second water bottle, so there’s always one in my hand and one in the fridge. Otherwise the bodega guys take one look at the red-faced and sweaty foreigner, and triple the price of water.
Today I bought a lemon from a small shop, and the shopkeeper really didn’t want to sell it to me, telling me it isn’t tasty and isn’t a snack, and offering to sell me an orange instead. My Chinese skills are at a weird state where I could understand the gist of his warnings, but couldn’t tell him I wanted to chop it up and put it in my water bottle for flavor. When I tried to describe it, and said water bottle, he pointed to the cooler so I could buy one.
This poor guy really did his best to explain that lemons aren’t for biting into, and he’s probably going to go home tonight and tell his wife about the foreign lady who would not be dissuaded from her weird eating habits.
