New Student Pickup

We planned to invite Heidi and Xuan over for dinner. But they couldn't come because of the last-minute change. It is time for all the international students to rush into Dallas for school again. David and I began to pack a care package for the SMU girl we were going to pick up Wednesday night. We put a quilt, sheet, pillow with pillow case, frying pan, forks, spoon, knife, chopsticks, glass, cup, electronic can opener and a bowl into two big sacks. That should get her started for the new life here.

Wednesday night, we had dinner at church. The spaghetti was delicious. After dinner, we went to Friendspeak to talk to George. Syed was supposed to meet us at the building. We didn't see him. After David talked to George, DG's Friendspeak reader came over and said, "I saw you at our church on Sunday!" We found out he goes to DCBC church that we visited last Sunday. He has been a Christian for 4 or 5 months. We wished he introduced himself while we were there!

We left at 7:35pm to pick up the Chinese girl Rusi. We saw Syed just came to the single's classroom. He said he could visit around by himself. It seemed that he could go around without our introduction. So we left for the airport. We met Rusi and her classmate April five minutes after we got to the luggage claim area. While we were gathering the bags for the girls, another Chinese girl was looking for help. David found out that her destination was Houston. But she came to the luggage claim area thinking that she had to get her luggage and recheck-in to Houston. Her flight was in another terminal (Terminal B) and she had already missed her flight. We wished that we could drive her to Terminal B. But we had to take care of the two girls that we just met. Finally after lots of explanation, she went in the airport gate and tried to catch a tram to get to Terminal B. I hoped she would catch the next flight. Rusi's classmate was picked up by a guy from SMU. He happened to know Ray, Olivia, and Brian. We also met Hannal from Friendspeak. She was picking up a UTD student. It was so sweet of her to do that! Rusi had bad ear-ache from the decending of the plane. We took her to her new apartment and met her temporary roommate, who will move back to China soon. We were glad to see that she had some basic things to start with. That reminded me of my first day in America nine years ago. David and I talked about it the whole way back home.

As soon as I came into the office today, Syed told me that he really liked the message he heard during the single's class. He also volunteered to pick up new students if there are any during the next couple of weeks. I was very happy to hear that.