Meta-Story- China

“Well Aurore went to China this spring break,” my mom says to my family at the dinner table. One of our Kucaba family reunions, or more accurately bragging over who has the best child. Being an only child, I have a whole family to represent and make proud.

“Gabrielle just got early acceptance to Princeton, Grandma K,” my aunt says trying to one up my mom.

“Aurore tell us more about China, I've always wanted to go,” my grandmother says to me without noticing my aunt’s braggadocious comment.

“It was such an amazing experience,” I say just as I always do when someone asks me about my trip to China. What I say is true, but there was so much more to it than just an amazing experience. The friendships, the views, the memories.

As I walk up to the group of people outside the school, I see faces that I've seen in the hallway, names I do not remember from the “get to know you” meetings, and the typical nerves set in. My awkwardness, the social obstacle that I can never get through, hits its maximum. I know some of the people here, the normal non genuine “niceness” kicks in, and the small talk with people starts right up. I pretend like I know these people and that we’re already friends, and follow the others as everyone else seems to be doing the same.

“The people really made the trip,” I tell my family as they look at me eagerly for the stories of the Great Wall, and the Terracotta Warriors. That was not my China trip, but that will be the story that they hear. “It was just like out of a postcard, it was absolutely beautiful”. What I tell them is true but that’s not what I love and miss about the trip.

Those faces I held awkward small talk with before getting on the plane, I look at now as we sit in a hotel room at 1 in the morning cuddling and talking about life, and I see bestfriends and relationships and memories I would never trade for the world. As we play games like “never have I ever”, I meet brand new people, and connect with them. I curl under my blanket with my two best friends and we talk to the group, and whisper among ourselves about the boys and the drama on the trip. The drama of who likes who, who hates who, and the different groups on the trip. My friends and I bought candy late at night and walked the streets of Shanghai alone in the darkness. We devour our candy as all of the people in the hotel room talk and laugh.

Some memories will fade, some people will be forgotten, but those people and those memories on my trip to China never will.

“The Great Wall was my favorite, it was not how I pictured it, yet it was so picturesque. Minus the pollution,” I tell my family as they nibble on their food. They’ll never know the time that I had there, or the memories that I made but they don't need to, they’re mine.

“So Gabrielle what’s you favorite aspect of Princeton,” My grandmother trails off and I am left just to remember.