charm within a picky auntie

Hi, this is Koji, a Japanese exchange student.

Yesterday(I've just finished one assignment, Hooray!! ) was my 2nd and the last participation to THE seniors :(

Among a group of 7 exchange students, I was somehow assigned to Hokkien group, which firstly appeared unreasonable to me, but later turned out to be a fun experience.

The title seems to be misleading since I cannot even understand basic Mandarin, but

as I was hoping to get some chance to show off my pre-nursery school level of Mandarin, Hokkien group seemed to be a nice option to me at the same time.

Our group has done quite a lot of cleaning at the first auntie's room, mainly because of her hair that was scattered around the room. However I enjoyed the cleaning and it was worth putting energy, since I hadn't done much cleaning most of the time before.

Besides, her room looked not as messy to me as everyone was saying.

My grandpa's house is so chaotic and filled with dust all over the place, so I might have an immunity against messiness. (and I'm quite disorganized as well)

As for chatting with the auntie, I had been clueless despite the initial effort to catch up.

Before moving to the second auntie's place, I was warned that she is particular about the way how we clean the room, so I had been picturing some grumpy auntie in my mind.

Admittedly, she was indeed picky about cleaning and everyone had to follow the way she told us to do. BUT, contrary to my prediction, she turned out to be somewhat adorable to me. The way she commanded was not domineering, but rather I could observe some genuine auntie-ness from her (I had no idea what she was saying, but the pronunciation was comfortable to hear, and the way she speaks reminded me of one of my favorite neighbors I used to play with when young. she was also fastidious about many trivial details)

All along, I had little idea what everyone was talking, but I really enjoyed the family-like atmosphere marked by frequent laughters.

It was another fruitful experience for me (even after discounting the hassle of coming over all the way to Kallang from PGP in an early?? Saturday morning), and though my last visit made me get disappointed by myself with my helpless Chinese, but it also left me some nostalgia and some warm-feeling.