a map for saturday

Our LC held a small documentary film festival inside the campus this week, the first day we watch "A Map for Saturday."

I've nearly never traveled alone. Maybe that one month in New York I was nearly alone; yet, I stayed in my aunt's house, so there still were familiar people around. Then it was last summer I spent two month in Beijing. I really don't know anyone there. The one I knew, my TN buddy, only picked me up at the airport, and then I've never seen her again. So the following two month I really live depend on myself and on those who gradually became my old friends.

My mom told me to quit the whole thing when I didn't have a place to stay. But I thought that maybe this is a chance to grow up a bit, so I stayed. I had fun in those two months, did a lot of things I've never done before, like waiting for a bus in 4 A.M. with another girl to go back to our place, like getting out of the bar and found the sky turned white. Things were crazy then.

I knew there was something different from the life I had lived and the life I'm going to live. But I couldn't tell you in clear sentence. But after coming back, I got it. It was a two-month-long Saturday. I didn't have to worry about the papers to turn in tomorrow, and I didn't have to worry that I might fall asleep in class in the early morning either. So the world seemed different. I had time to really look and feel things in life, to really talk to a person I'm interested in. I guess that is why traveling is always appealing, because you make another choice, different from what you used to.

I am not sure if I'll have another long, long Saturday like Brooks did, but now I'm happy and content that at least I had that two month, so I had a bite of a different life/attitude.