Pay It Forward (in action)

In my previous post (see 2-11), I wrote:

"we had no way of paying her (Visakha, our friend-of-a-friend in Sri Lanka) back completely for all that she did for us and probably never will have the chance. But, whenever someone comes to my house as a friend of one of my friends, I know I will show them every courtesy that was ever shown to me."

Ok, with that in mind, here's what happened today . . . barely a week after I wrote that.

While I was out running some errands on campus, Katie called me. She was in town taking care of some stuff and had gotten a call from (who she thought was) one of our student/friends. The student told her that he had met a girl from England at the train station, was helping translate for her, and that she was stranded in Yichang for the night. The girl was trying to get to Beijing but tickets were sold out so she wasn't able to leave until tomorrow. She needed a place to stay. Could we help her out? So, Katie wanted to know what did I think about this odd situation. My first (selfish) reaction was "I don't want to give up my whole evening to have to entertain some stranger." Especially since my classes start tomorrow and I really needed tonight to get things ready. I had already passed up an invitation for tonight so that I could get things in order. I (somewhat grudgingly) decided that, ok, we could help this girl out. After hanging up the phone with Katie, I remembered what I had just written about being willing to help out people . . . just like people were willing to drop everything and help me when I needed it. So I readjusted my attitude and felt more than a little shame at how quickly I'd forgotten what it was like to be stuck somewhere needing assistance.

I met up with Rebecca and the student and showed her to our house. Turns out it wasn't at all the student that Katie thought she was talking to (phone conversations with students are often confusing and unclear). Actually neither Katie or I knew that student at all and we have no idea how he had Katie's phone number. But, for some strange reason, he called Katie and put Rebecca in touch with us. Hanging out with Rebecca ended up being fun. She's been traveling all over China for the holiday and is on her way back to Beijing where she lives and teaches. She's at our house right now. We helped her figure out some things to do tomorrow while we have class.

I had no idea my Pay It Forward Traveler's Code would be tested so quickly.

Now I should stop blogging and go back to preparing for class tomorrow . . .