Suprise #1

Floating down the Yangzi river on an overcrowded ferry. 3 days and 2 long nights.  Not much left to do but drink beer and try to teach old chinese men a card game from Israel.  They learn fast, across languages barriers, (cards are a brilliant common language spoken in every culture), and as jacks, queens, aces are thrown down hard on the red carpeted boat deck more beers are opened and they try their best to hand you cigarette after cigarette and every so often ask Amelia to stand up and everyone oooohs, aaaahs, claps, laughs, and wow, yes, that is a tall white girl. And outside the fog is thick as a cloud. Rain drips slowly on abandoned plastic chairs saturating old sunflower seeds and cigarette butts until they become small piles of pulp waiting to be washed out to join that fast and wide Yangzi current.

And I can't help but ask myself, how is it that I ended up here?

It all really began in a small dark hallway in the town of Chengdu, China.  Before that it started in a taxi.  A taxi that dropped me off on a Chinese street corner sometime around midnight.  I had written, in a sort of half chinese half english way, an address which I repeated over and over during the drive from the airport, and which the driver seemed to not understand one bit of.  He just smiled, waved, and sang along to the radio.  Yet he must have understood something, because here I was.  Bag on my back, a small crumbled paper in my hand.  After the address I had writen down three numbers, 1, 3, 1101.  Unit 1, Building 3, Apartment 1101.  I studied the paper as best I could in the dark.  Looked up and finally let my eyes focus on what exactly it was that stood in front of me.  An apartment complex as big as my hometown.  My eyes widened.  And I'm pretty sure I laughed.

My best guesswork led me into an elevator, and quickly I was on the 11th floor. I stepped out into a small dark hallway, and tried my best to decipher apartment numbers in that pitch black.  The lights had to be motion, or sound activated, so I jumped, clapped, waved my arms towards the ceiling, but still I remained in the dark.  Turning to face the door I dreaded what I figured would happen after I knocked.  Some old, beautiful, chinese woman would appear and see a confused little white girl with a back pack standing in the dark.  And I would do some sort of awkward smile/wave and back away slowly, return to the outside and try my luck again. It could be a very long night.

But, as it all goes, it went quite differently.

After one last try to get those lights on, I surrendered to knocking in the dark. And waited. A lifetime. Until slowly the door opened and with a sigh of releif revealed a very familar face. Lauren. Smiling. And another, in the kitchen, washing socks, turning to look at me. Amelia. In an instant socks fall to the floor, and with arms covered to the elbows in bubbling soap she screams, (hall lights flash on!) jumps, wiggles, hugs, kisses, stands back, shock written across her face, another scream and more hugs. And I shed my bag and fall on a matress in laughter and realize just how great of an idea it was to fly all the way around the world to suprise a friend.

A week later and we are floating along.  Heading towards the unknown.  Towards more suprises. Towards the Great Wall and some checks off a lifetime of a list.