Chapter 156: Preparing for Class

Chapter 156

The setting sun casts long shadows of the two of them.

Wei Cheng was happy to hear Xiao Qi agree to go with her. Her 5'7" frame was bouncing about happily.

"Let's go together at first. Once we've learned the ropes, we can take turns going," Wei Cheng said with a smile. Her single eyelids narrowed into slits, making her look even smaller, but still cheerful and infectious.

"It's $200 a visit, so going three times a week is $600. If we go every week, that covers a month's living expenses. I've looked around, and this seems like the highest paying part time job for students. There's also a cafe on campus looking to hire servers with pretty good pay, but I'd rather serve animals than people. Animals are simpler than complex humans."

Xiao Qi had agreed to go together because she wanted to practice driving near the new campus, which wasn't far. She was also quite interested in the horses they saw the other day. That little horse had touched her heart.

She didn't expect Wei Cheng to say serving animals was better than serving people. Crude but true.

On the way over they messaged their roommates about dinner. Chen Mier excitedly replied that she had joined the student council and they were having dinner tonight. Gu Yunshu was reading novels in the dorm and didn't want to come out, asking them to get takeout.

So Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng went to the cafeteria. You can order good food there, and it's cheaper than the restaurants off campus and cleaner too. Wei Cheng preferred the cafeteria.

The portions at the cafeteria were huge. Don't just pick at the meat, eat until full for cheap.

After they ate, they got takeout for Yunshu and some fruit. She liked fresh fruit and fancier things.

When Xiao Qi got back to the dorm, she practiced writing for a bit, then went for a run.

The key to distance running was perseverance. Skip one day and you'd feel lazy the next day. Skip two days and you basically won't want to move on the third day. Xiao Qi was alright thanks to the system's natural motivation. She had also consciously increased her training lately, like doing sets of TOEFL after SETs of CETs. The CETs felt easy after the TOEFLs.

It was the same with running. At first even 10,000 steps a day was exhausting. Now 30,000 steps was nothing. 10,000 steps felt like child's play in comparison.

Xiao Qi really liked the environment at Enhua University. Spacious, quiet, separate dorm areas for males and females with the male dorms in a completely different zone. No disruptions when exercising.

After finishing today's 30,000 steps, she ran two more laps. She felt more tired than usual but her heart rate remained steady instead of racing too fast.

With swimming experience under her belt, Xiao Qi also looked up running videos to learn techniques. Besides building stamina, there were skills to running faster or breaking records, like breathing, leg thrust, and movement. She ran while recalling the videos, correcting her mistakes.

Xiao Qi studied with headphones on, undisturbed by her surroundings. With other people around, she was even more efficient, driven by the sense of urgency from seeing others fool around.

Wei Cheng also came to preview books. Gu Yunshu was absorbed in a good novel she'd found this afternoon.

It wasn't until 8:30 that Chen Mier came back, smelling of barbecue. She'd probably gone to eat barbecue. Xiao Qi's keen sense of smell found the aroma too strong.

Chen Mier snuck in and saw her deskmate studying. She whispered, "I'm just stopping by to take a look. Keep going, I'm going back to shower. So tired." Then she trotted off again.

There was a break during mandatory study hall. Wei Cheng came over to discuss with Xiao Qi, "Let's go report to the stables after English class tomorrow since we'll be near the new district and get out early."

Xiao Qi nodded in agreement.

By the end of study hall, she had finished an English set and reviewed tomorrow's English lesson again, completing all the exercises. She felt Academic English Reading and Writing didn't seem difficult, possibly because they had just started. It was quite simple.

Language learning was always easy to hard. Like Japanese - the Fifty Syllabic Chart seemed so simple at first, giving the illusion of fluency. Then upon further study, the complexity emerged - grammar, context, uppercase and lowercase letters, etc. Memorization was the safest bet.

Some of the academic English vocabulary Xiao Qi had memorized before, overlapping with New Concept English, making it feel like cheating and very quick to learn.

She rewrote and organized the Japanese vocabulary learned this week. She had searched but the school cafes were about the same as the one in the new district so she didn't sign up. There were Japanese electives in the English department she could try to audit. Teachers who taught students must have superb skills.

People started leaving the classroom around 9, before the end of study hall. Her roommates came to get Xiao Qi and she left with them.

Back at the dorm, it smelled pleasantly of Chen Mier's shower gel and shampoo, from Sephora.

Seeing her deskmate return, Chen Mier eagerly rushed over as if to fling herself into Xiao Qi's arms, only to be blocked by a book Xiao Qi held up.

Chen Mier didn't care, still smiling and said: "I became a student union executive, maybe I'll be in charge of checking the dorms in our building in the future, so if you guys need anything, you can sneakily bribe me first."

Xiao Qi: ...

The student union really seems complicated, Mier who had just gone for half a day, already knew how to take advantage of a little power.