10 Days in Boston

Day 1

It was a rarely beautiful night in Seattle when I took my late night flight to Boston. Sky was clear and covered with sparkling starts, the air saturated with the smell of grass, summer was finally here, I thought in the car while looking out through the passenger side window. The overnight flight made me feel very peaceful, I slept tightly on my way to Chicago, and felt like I was in a dream when waiting for my next flight to Boston. It was not until my flight landed that I got my nerves back. 10:30 am, my smart iPhone had already automatically changed into the Eastern Time Zone. I sent a text to Jay, the small group leader of my table at the Vision conference a couple months ago. I had been looking forward to seeing his smiling face again, he was always smiling, very humble and with a big, warm servant’s heart.

Only 15 minutes later, the while van in which Jay was driving stopped in front of me. Scott immediately jumped out from the passenger’s seat and helped me put my luggage in the back. It was a surprise to see Scott there since I hadn't known the full list of staff. We met briefly at the Vision conference, he was a eloquent Chinese speaker and lived in China for many years. It turned out I was the first one they picked up from the airport, woo-hoo! :-) Soon after, another 5 students joined our gang: LJ from Chicago, Lei from Minneapolis, Hanyu from Kentucky, Yifu from LA, and Herold from Pennsylvania. We had a chat in English and Chinese, introduing ourselves and why we ended up at the Boston Trek.

It was only 10 minutes away from the airport to where we were going to stay — the Warren Tower, a campus dormitory at Boston University. We took the elevator to the 4th floor, where the front desk was located, Pet and Kelly, another two staff already waited for us there. Pet is orginally from Phillipines and has been on staff for over 20 years. Kelly, who turned out to be my mentor on this project, spent many years of her life in Shanghai and Suzhou. Putting down our luggage, this expanded gang moved to a Chinese cafe minutes away and the party continued. I had my first meal in Boston, Kongpao Beef, classic American Chinese food. Everyone was excited about the project and meeting with new friends. The spirit was full of energy. We chatted while enjoying the food, shared with each other how we decided to come to this project and how long we had been to America. After lunch, LJ, Yifu and I took a walk along with the Charles river. That was an amazing view, trees lining along each side of the bank, a bunch of students lying on the grass were reading and talking, white clouds were like cotton scattered out on a crystal blue canvas.

Later that afternoon, more participants started to arrive, the check-in process began and the adventure would be kicked off soon!!