Back to the Language Barrier

The reason we travelled everywhere by taxi yesterday was that the air conditioning in the family car stopped working and had to be taken to the mechanic. It eventually turned out this was a symptom of the entire cooling system being broken, but in any case, it was up and running today. Once again, Kelly’s uncle came to my aid, and after I exchanged goodbyes with a good part of Kelly’s family, he drove me to the airport, with Kelly and Yiding riding along to see me off.

 Kelly's father took a picture of us before I departed (well, several pictures, but this was the best).
Taking this picture was exactly as chaotic as it looks.
The chaos has been fixed a little in this picture.

My destination was Seoul where my dad was already waiting for me. Our joint trip was conceived several months ago and was meticulously worked out by my dad while I was cramming Chinese textbooks into my head. After two months of getting comfortable talking to salespeople, airline employees, and hotel staff in Chinese, therefore, I was in a foreign country where Chinese was as good as useless: back to the language barrier for me.

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