In high school, I had four good friends – Uggie, Brad, J-Rock and John. We pretty much spent the better part of our days and evenings together from middle of our sophomore year on. We always made a point of getting together when we came back from college on breaks and in the summers. Brad and Uggie were roommates in college in Fargo, and J-Rock and John started out together in Minneapolis while I roamed alone in Morris, but we made a point to visit each other throughout the school year. Besides my two brothers, they were the other people in my wedding.
Eventually, we all had to grow up and get married. Even after all those years, 4 of the 5 of us live within 35 miles of our place. One, John, is a little bit further away. Like 6800 miles away.
John and his wife, Rachel, and three daughters are now living in Jinan, China (the Spring City). They have been there for 7 years now and John is working to start an English language school there for the locals. They have grown to enjoy their time over there as they deal with the language differences and the smog. I haven’t seen John and Rachel too much in the last 10 years actually – they moved to Kentucky shortly after Rachel finished school in ’99.
They are making a 2 1/2 month tour back through the States, visiting their organization on the east coast and Rachel’s family in Iowa. They made a stop in Fergus on Saturday to have a little reception at John’s mom’s house in town. We got to huddle up as old friends again (plus John’s brother Andy and minus J-Rock for the moment). John’s girls are 5, 3 and 2 and they played well with Katie and Amelia.
After the little reception, we were able to arrange a parents-only night out at Mabel Murphy’s. I don’t think the 9 of us had ever been alone together at one time – it was really interesting to catch up with everyone. The five of us friends sat at one end of the table and shared lots of stories from the past 10 years and even before. It was always interesting to remember something that happened to someone else, that they couldn’t remember – or when it happened to you.
We learned more about life in China – John enjoys his work; he has a house helper who is able to help Rachel with the kids and helps to teach them Chinese. He doesn’t like the smog and all the people everywhere. He enjoys the chance to get out of the city where there are some wide-open spaces. We asked him what his future held, and he wasn’t sure. His girls feel like China is home, since they were all born in Asia, so they’d like to stay and see things through. We’ll see what life has in store for them in the future.
My dad was watching the girls and we had promised to be home by 8, but we just kept talking and talking. Finally at 8:40, I figured we had to go. It’s just too bad it may be several years before we get together again.
By the way, Rachel keeps up a blog of their activities across the big pond – http://gonewiththewinds.blogspot.com/.
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