posted by wtanaka at 7/08/2003 10:29:00 PM

 

I met a Tibetan girl while I was in the Chinese town of "Shangri-la." She was one of young people working at the guest house I stayed at. At the time, I remember thinking she was cute. There were actually three girls and one guy working there, and all of them were pretty nice. None of them spoke much English, but were all pretty patient in trying to understand my Chinese and trying to communicate to me in words that I had already learned. All of this contributed greatly to my warm memories of the place.

I ended up staying there for five days -- the first two days I wandered around the city and surrounding area doing some sightseeing and only really talked to the people at the guesthouse in the evening and morning. I was planning on leaving the second day and heading back to Kunming. From there I would fly to Delhi in India to try and get replacement tickets for the ones that had been stolen in Kunming when I first arrived.

But the place was so beautiful, and the people that I had tried talking to in Chinese were so patient and friendly that, when the girls at the guesthouse told me that I should stay longer, it was enough to convince me to stay. I ended up spending the next three days at the guesthouse, trying to learn Chinese and practicing by talking to them.

Over the course of the three days it became clear that this girl liked me. She went with me to buy a sleeper ticket back to Kunming on the last day I was there and took me to meet one of her friends that apparently with her boyfriend owned one of the shops along the main street which sold miscellaneous things. There weren't too many people at the guesthouse, and so she spent all of her day on two of the days sitting with me and trying to do some kind of language exchange.

I figured that once some time had past after I left, the feelings for her that I had would slowly go away. But now, five months later, I still think about her a lot. We started emailing each other pretty frequently.

I have to admit that the feeling I have is influencing my decision to move to China for a while, but I have been making sure that I have enough other reasons for going that in the very probably case that this doesn't work out, that I won't feel unhappy that I'm in China.

We'll see what happens. I must admit that I haven't felt this.. obsessed about someone for several years. On the one hand, it seems somewhat unhealthy but, on the other hand, it's nice to know that I can still feel this way.