Xixi 3/25/2012

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."

His essay had barely started by the end of the second period. I urged him to get his Macbook so that I could help him with the essay. He looked away about three times without saying anything. Finally, he stood up and brought his Macbook back.

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.