Exams, homesickness, and toothache (Suzanne)

This morning I woke up, and not only had I woken up too late to get breakfast from the dining hall, but the whole of my gums underneath my lower left set of molars was swollen and painful. This happens because my wisdom teeth are growing in but don’t have the space to do it, so there are a few flaps of gum covering the wisdom tooth, which food constantly gets stuck in, and therefore every so often I get a gum infection despite my religiously fanatic teeth cleaning rituals.

The problem with this, aside from the fact that I am now in pain, is that it seriously screws up my practice and I have a clarinet exam in ten days. I can’t hold the embouchure without some degree of pain, I can’t blow air into the instrument without some degree of pain, and even if I could, the swelling means that I can’t really hold the right shape of embouchure because there’s this big chunk of diseased flesh in the way. I’m kind of kicking myself, because yesterday when the swelling wasn’t so severe I forced myself to ignore it and practice for three and a half hours which is probably why it’s so bad today.

It’ll probably be fine, since the last few times I’ve had this, it’s only been for two or three days, and I’m pretty ahead with everything I have to play in the exam. But still, as soon as I get back to Hong Kong, where I have health insurance that covers dentists, I am getting all four of those bleeding wisdom teeth removed at the same time. (Yes, I’m aware that this will probably involve me being drugged up on painkillers and eating liquid foods for several weeks afterwards, but I really hate my wisdom teeth.)

In other news, college now serves us five meals a day, up from the usual four, because they seem to think that the best way to do well in exams is to go in stuffed with food. We now get breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea, and supper. Plus the amount of food and the choice we get for all the meals has hugely increased. Hello, weight gain. There’s some truth to the American notion of the ‘Freshman 15’ — the 15 pounds that you gain in your freshman (i.e. 1st) year.

All this food makes me really homesick, because it’s all Western food and right now I’m really craving Chinese food. Particularly the type of Chinese food you get from small shops and vendors of questionable hygiene back home. There’s Chinatown here, of course, but it’s not the same. I’m actually impressed that they have authentic food (although a lot of them are still really really fake, like the one I visited in O-week), but the ones with authentic food are so expensive. It costs $7 for a bowl of congee that would cost the equivalent of $1 back home, or $40 for a steamed fish or a roast duck that would cost $8 back home, or $10 for a bowl of dumplings that would cost 50c in Beijing or $2 in Hong Kong.

It’s so expensive to eat out here, actually. I guess I’m used to living in a country where in some cases it actually works out cheaper to eat out than to make it yourself at home, but whenever I go out for someone’s birthday or eat at uni because I can’t get back to college in time for a meal and forgot to order a packed lunch or a late dinner it always comes with a mental image of my bank account draining. It’s honestly not an exaggeration to say that I could eat in a nice restaurant back home for the price of fast food here.

I called my dad the other day and he said he’s going to be in Beijing for a few weeks when I get back, and if I make it home in time I can come with him. Can’t wait.

Also, I have done exactly 0 work during swotvac, other than my usual clarinet and aural studies practise. Actually, amending that statement, I have done exactly 0 law related work for swotvac. I think I actually don’t know how to study for humanities, because I picked all my IB subjects on the assumption that I’d never see another humanity in my life. Or maybe I tell myself that because I haven’t touched my law notes, don’t want to, and don’t feel guilty about it because I honestly would not mind failing the subjects.