Frank, Fiona, and Sam . . . My New House Pets

  I wanted to introduce you to my new pets. Since this is my first time being moved out I have had to get use to living by myself. I have found this more difficult because nothing living shares my apartment. To make this better I decided to get a pet, and not just any pet, the perfect pet. It started when I was walking with the teacher that is responsible for my foreign papers and getting my permeant residence visa. I needed to have a photo taken and we happened to walk along a road that I had yet to go, it was on this trip that I noticed a small flower shop. I had a vase that I bought to put the flowers that the school gave me on my first day. Unfortunately, those flowers were at their end and I had an empty vase. So, I decided that I would revisit the shop at a later date to browse their selection.
  That next weekend, on the way back from a food run, I returned to the road and went into the shop. When I entered the owner was helping two young women find flowers for a bouquet. I glanced around the room that was rather small, it had potted plants on the left wall and individual flowers on the right. I just stood there until the two women left. Having decided on my purchases I proceeded to ask in my limited Chinese how much certain items were. I purchased a peach flower for my vase and made an unexpected purchase of a small plant that I felt I just had to have for my apartment, both of which are below.

   I was rather impressed with the fact that I was able to buy my items with just pointing and a little help from my phone. Before I left I tried to ask him how often I should water my potted plant, part of the reason was that I never had a plant quite like this one before. I looked up the words for plant and water and showed them to him. After a little bit of me pointing to my phone (which led to him first thinking I wanted to be WeChat buddies, which we did became), my plant, and trying but failing miserably to understand any of his Mandarin I recognized the hand gesture for ten, which is making a plus sign with your fingers and also the word for day. I finally understood that I should water the plant every ten days, at least that I what I hope he said. The plant has not died yet so I must be doing okay. When I returned home with my plant and flower, the flower I put into the now empty flower jar and the potted plant I sat near my bed, I decided that I was going to name my potted plant. After slight thought I had a house pet plant named Frank.
  I did not realize how much I enjoyed having something else living in the same apartment as me. I did not want to get a cat or a dog since I was gone all day and did not want to worry about the clean up issues. So, I invested in a small maintenance pet; you just have to water the plant every ten days. After about two weeks I liked Frank so much I decided to expand the population in my apartment and buy another plant pet. This past weekend I once again returned to the plant shop. After a few weeks of practicing Mandarin I was a little better than before however I still did not understand everything that he was saying to me. I did understand him enough to buy two new plant pets instead of one . . . I could not decide on which one to buy. Below you can see Fiona on the left with the pink flowers and Sam on the right. While my buying plants and giving them names my be a tad strange it has allowed me to make my apartment more homey (although I am by no means replacing my family with plants!). I am think about buying a small one for my desk at school, quite a few of the other teachers have a plant on their desk, I find it rather funny that quite a number of these teachers have a type of cactus as their desk plant. I hope my pets plants survive until June and I am already planning on what teachers will take the best care of them when I leave!!