My landlord’s son, Manzi (Melvin) is quite a character and his English is excellent, honed by hours and hours of cartoon watching. I was trying an experiment where I put a bunch of the little remnants of soap bars in tinfoil and left them outside to hopefully melt during the day and congeal at night. When I explained what I was trying to do to this 7-year-old, he said, “That won’t work.” He then proceeded to plug in my hot plate and used the top of a jam jar as a small pan to melt the pieces of soap. When they cooled, he formed them into a colorful ball of soap. Very clever!

My bicycle has always held a fascination for Manzi since I got it in October. He tried and tried to ride it, but he was just too little. After about 1, 000 attempts, he finally got it. Here’s a picture of him riding my bike for a few seconds in the courtyard. A little while later, he left the bike on the ground in the courtyard and took off with my helmet, which he likes to wear backwards, for some other adventure.