It was my birthday a few days ago and last night Niki called.  We didn’t talk.  The call went to the message device.  It was just as well.  Niki can’t speak English.  I can’t speak Cantonese.  But she calls me every year on my birthday anyway.  It is very nice. 

Niki was one of the kids at the school we volunteered at.  She was 15 or so at the time and looked and acted like she was 12.  She is a pretty smart cookie and has remarkable artistic skills but she was also shy and disinclined to ‘study’ English.  So we didn’t really talk much.  None, actually.  She just liked Sally and me and hung around despite not really understanding us at all.  Niki is walking proof that ‘good vibes’ are enough for a friendship to develop.

Niki is probably about 18 now and likely still looks less than 15.  She is the eldest of three daughters being raised by a single mom in Hong Kong.  All the kids are cute as buttons.  But not so much the mom.  Mom looks a bit like Ernest Borgnine but a smidge homelier.  But she is very, very nice and she is an excellent mom. 

When we were last there, we all had dinner together.  The incident was described in the China Monologues.  Write to me if you want 50 pages of drivel about teaching kids and being an old white guy in Hong Kong.  Nothing like three mashed potatoes with your pizza……..(you had to be there).

We are often ‘touched’ by our friends in Hong Kong.  Gifts, notes, phone calls, e-mails.  Some, of course, are closer to us than others but all are very, very kind and generous.  Being there was a wonderful experience at the time and made even more wonderful by the continuance of the friendships we made. 

The East is the East and the West is the West and the two are still very unlikely to ever meet in any real sense but the differences and the distances don’t seem to hinder the relationships.  And we are the very lucky recipients of that.