Allison CP - 3

Today was my second conversation partner session with XinWen. We discussed several topics including Chinese music, ice cream, and hula-hoops. I picked her up before the adventure to Lofty Pursuits with the rest of the group to take her to Books A Million which is right down the road. We were surprised by how many options there were for Chinese-English dictionaries and books. She decided to buy the same picture dictionary that I had bought for myself over the weekend. It was around this time that we discussed how it was interesting that words were always going in and out of fashion like different words for cool for example. She mentioned an increasingly popular Chinese word that my other conversation partner Joyce actually taught me the other day: 囧 (jiong) which seems to be like the American equivalent of "FAIL." The character is meant to look like an ashamed face too which only adds to its popularity.

Then we were off to Lofty Pursuits! I think we were both equally overwhelmed by the amount of choices there were for sundaes and other ice cream novelties. We easily found Ted, Joyce, and her roommate. I tried the infamous Guinness flavor as well as champagne sorbet. Both of which were quite yummy but I fell in love with the strawberry cookies and cream flavor so I got that one. I think XinWen got something with chocolate. Whatever it was it looked delicious. After eating our ice cream, we had a bit of a hula-hooping contest and XinWen beat us all easily. I didn't get to stay too long after that because I had to get to work, but all in all a quite fun outing with XinWen!