Honestly,
I feel nervous writing the "final" blog. It is like a conclusion and
I feel I need to write a brilliant blog as our ending story. I am so glad that
by the time we left Philly, several of you had not finished your blogs. This
gives me extra time to think about it. Thank you for delaying.
March
23th was the deadline for the essay for our ESOL class. In the noisy classroom,
a 17-year-old boy was sitting on his chair with his tired face. He was carrying
a dark backpack and he had no Macbook on his desk. The most striking feature
that distinguished him from other students was his silence. Somehow we looked
at each other simultaneously, and he said to me:
"Are
you in college?"
I
stood up and went to the chair beside him. We exchanged some basic information.
"You
look young." He said after learning my age, "You seem like 18 or
19."
"Thank
you." I smiled, looking at his sleepy face.
His
mother was born in Cambodia. Then she went to Thailand, and finally to America.
She gave birth to several children in her long journey, and he was born in
America in a spring 17 years ago.
"Do
you have siblings?"
"No.
In China we have One Child Policy. You cannot have the second child without penalty.
You have siblings?"
"Yes.
We have the same mom but different dads."
I was
shocked. This sentence came out of his mouth so naturally that I could not feel
a hint of the fluctuation of his mood. He looked at me with his emotionless
eyes, which helped me constrain my emotion in a very effective way.
"Do
your parents live together in Beijing?"
"Yes."
"My
parents live separately. My mom lives here, and my dad is in Cambodia. He will
not come to see us in America."
When
I wrote down the paragraph above, I thought that I should have asked him
whether he missed his dad. Yet I did not. At that time I felt too sad to think.
"Do
you have a kid?"
"No.
Do you?" I tried to ask him in a relaxed voice. I found myself beginning
to get into his world. I could expect his answer. It was his question rather
than his answer that shocked me. He appeared to believe that his life was a normal
one.
"I
have a kid." He answered in his typical way, "A son. I want a
daughter. I like my son. I like my wife. She is from Vietnam."
"Is
she in school now?"
"Yes."
"This
one?"
"No.
She is in a different school."
I
checked his topic. It was about cloning.
"Do
you know what cloning means?"
He
hesitated for a second and said no.
It
took me a while to explain the concept to him. Then I found an essay online
discussing the pros and cons of cloning. I broke it into several pieces and
asked him to read one of them. He used his index finger while he was reading,
drawing a fictitious line under the letters.
"Tell
me what this paragraph talks about."
He
turned to me with his dull eyes. I knew he was not thinking.
"You
need to think."
"I'm
too tired to think."
I did
not know how to encourage him. He was not going to college because he needed money.
At last, I said to him:
"At
least you need to graduate from high school to get a good job. For your wife
and for your son. And you have to think, otherwise you cannot graduate."
He
said he knew that.
I was
always eager to travel to Cambodia. At the finale of In the Mood for Love, the movie directed by Wong Kar-Wai, Angkor
Wat is a mysterious and romantic place to hide the secret of Chow Mo-wan. The
boy was also eager to travel to Cambodia, for a much simpler reason. At the end
of third period, he repeated:
"You
look really young. You are like my age."
"Thank
you." I repeated.
The
last afternoon was a happy one. The fabulous lunch and the colorful mural made
me feel joyful. It was a sunny afternoon. I left the building with three girls.
The sunshine projected our shadows in front of us. Behind us was the giant
building of JBHS, standing peacefully in the warm sunshine.
That
last evening, we drove from JBHS to the church, from the church to #honeyssitandeat,
and from #honeyssitandeat to the church. It was an enjoyable evening, with the
pleasantly cool breeze and the apricot lights along the river. I was dozing in
the back row, feeling exhausted, complete, and empty. On the final day in
Philly, I could still feel the cultural differences. I needed explanations of
American food, American games, American cities and American urban languages.
However, I felt that I was in a car with my old friends. I loved the way that
you explained those unfamiliar terms for me, and I loved the way that you said
"I understand" when I could not find the appropriate vocabulary. Behind
our differences, we shared the same appreciation of dedication and friendship.
Words
can be powerful, and words can be powerless. When I sat in my shabby, messy and
temporary room in a foreign country, turning my trip into a foreign language, I
felt that the blog was more difficult than I had thought. Eventually this vivid
experience will become a combination of sentences, and
people read numerous sentences every day. It is easy to realize that we should
do something, but it is hard to decide that we will definitely do something. I
am gratified that at least I did one thing, which makes my blog more than an
ordinary blog to me.
