Serendipity

I have many stories to tell about my recent trip to Shanghai, but I'm going to break them up into individual posts. So here is the first of many.

I swear every time I go to China, I have a strange chance encounter. When I was first flying to Fuzhou, while I was waiting for a connecting flight in the Taipei airport, I ran into someone who knew my mother in high school. Then later while living in Fuzhou, when I went to have dinner at a classmate's house with her husband, turns out he used to be my neighbor when I was a kid. I didn't know he was my old neighbor until last summer when he happened to run into my dad and told him about meeting me (he didn't tell me he was my old neighbor because he didn't want to weird me out, all he said was that he was from Beaverton and knew people in Forest Grove).

This last trip only provided yet another chance encounter. I spent the entire week with Joyce and her family, and one night we went to a Japanese restaurant. Since we were a large party, we were seated in a room with another large party. As I walked in I noted that most of the people at this table were foreigners. A thought instantly crossed my mind that it could be the folks from ChinesePod, however I quickly dismissed it. At one point Patrick's father was talking to the other table in Spanish (him & Evelyn bounded over his spanish speaking ability), and someone said something to the extend of "oh you must be using SpanishPod". After having such great success with Chinesepod, they expanded into spanish with SpanishPod. Praxis Language was created as a sort of parent company and I believe there are plans to expand into other languages.

When I heard them say SpanishPod, my heart skipped a beat. I then looked over the crowd again and got that feeling again that it was them. While I still couldn't believe my luck, I knew I had to ask them if they were in fact the folks from ChinesePod. So I stopped by on my way back from the bathroom and after I apologized for interrupting their meal, asked them if they knew of ChinesePod. "We are ChinesePod!" someone exclaimed. I was then introduced to John Pasden, one of the hosts and Jenny Zhu, one of the co-founders (I could be wrong about this, but I know she's been there from the start). I must have blushed like a star-struck school girl and in a way thats exactly how I felt. For over a year I had been listening to this woman's voice on a daily basis. Meeting her was like meeting a celebrity. She was very sweet and even let me take a photo of her.

I told her how I wanted to move to Shanghai and work for ChinesePod. She encouraged me to send an email as they are always looking for people. Part of me still can't believe my luck. Shanghai is a big city and of all the Japanese restaurants, I happened to end up that the same one as them. The rest of that night, I keep repeating the word, "serendipity" in my head. Now my heart is all a flutter with dreams of me living in Shanghai, working for ChinesePod, hanging out with Joyce & Patrick.

Realistically, I know I can't move until sometime in 2009. I need to save more money and I really want to be here for the holidays for when Ry & Alletta return to Portland. Aside from all the other wonderful reasons I'm glad I took this trip, this encounter makes me especially glad. Now that I've met Jenny, I have a more direct connection than just being a subscriber. This dream of mine has taken on a whole new angle, and seems slightly more real. Gods I hope so. I fell in love with Shanghai all over again during this trip and could feel my brain begin to switch into Chinese mode during the 2 days. If I had stayed longer, I'm sure I would have been to improve my Chinese.