For about three weeks in September, I hitchhiked through northeastern China. I am Chinese American, yet on this trip I met with people from an entirely different world.
I stood outside a hangar at the Anchorage airport, facing the morning sun, one week after finishing my first year at Tufts. If I had turned around and flown home at that moment, no one would have faulted me — and my heart might have stopped trying to leap out of my throat. The last thing on my mind was school. Gone was the friendliness of my dorm, but gone too was the pressure and low self-esteem that had dragged and dragged on me all year. I blinked hard, walked inside and thus began my journey through seasonal work.
