Old Friends

aOne of the reasons I added this sidetrip to my Thailand trip was to see  friends from my years in Beijing. The last time I was here was fall 2018, and I wasn't able to get up here when we were doing our packing up last summer. We have kept in touch through Zoom and WeChat, but it isn't the same. With my China years (most likely) behind me, it felt off to not have a chance to see them again.

Sunday... I spent a wonderful, and I do mean wonderful, afternoon with my dear friend, Helen. We were neighbors and our daughters were best friends for the four years I volunteered at New Day. We have kept in touch since then, helping each other in various ways from college applications to deliveries of fan bien mian (noodles) and contact lenses, and sharing the ups and downs of parenting teenage girls. Helen knows very well my picky eating habits so she chose a Peking Duck restaurant for us to have lunch. Yummmm. We ate duck, shared stories, and laughed a lot. But no, not done yet. We then found a Starbucks with outdoor seating to enjoy the beautiful day and talk and talk some more...the past, the future, life's joys and worries. Our lives could not be more different in so many ways, and maybe the bond we share is more precious because of it. I don't know when our paths will cross again, but I know we will continue to keep in touch until they do.

Monday...Another chance to walk down memory lane, this time with the staff of New Day Foster Home. I have kept in touch with a couple of these ladies, and when I said I would like to get together, they told the rest of the team and they all invited me down for homemade jiaozi. I did not say no!
While we laughed and chatted about old memories, we also shared the work we have been doing, me with older orphans and them managing enrichment programs inside a few orphanages. They are doing really hard and important work and seeing the difference that staff training and care makes. We also shared the hard stuff, and the ways we wish we could do more. Again it is so evident that life's circumstances, culture, and language are not the barriers we think they are when our hearts and minds are so in sync. Okay, it helps that most of them speak much better English than I do Chinese.

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