As far as Chinese cities go, Suzhou is a small town with a population of only 2 million. (Shanghai has nearly 17 million) It’s very well known for it’s famous and ancient gardens, and so while my family was in town we decided to make a day trip over to see the famous gardens.
I’m sitting down in one of the clearings and this girl walks in. I turn over and realize that she looks really familiar. She turns over and looks at me and gets a really confused look on her face.
“Alberto?” she asks?
Randomly enough, it turns out that my friend from high school, Ann, was visiting Suzhou with her family at the exact same time as I was. She’s been studying Chinese in Beijing for the past year and will be returning to the US this summer to study in the fall. Oh, yeah. And it seems as if we’ll both be on the same flight back to the US!
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The past week has been a whirlwind of activity. My mother and siblings have been in Nanjing with me and it’s been intense. We went to Shanghai, Suzhou and we’ve been playing the role of the tourist the whole time. I’ve been speaking more Chinese the past several days than I have in a long while. Tomorrow we’re off to Xi’an and then to Beijing and then finally homeward-bound. Very much looking forward to seeing Alicson.
Until then.