Bekah picked me up at the airport in Chengdu. She was waiting for me (playing Solitaire on her phone) and greeted me with a sulky, Where have you been, and with a smile.

Our plane sat at the gate for an hour and a half in Hefei for reasons that are still unclear to me, giving Bekah time to catch up on her Solitaire playing and sulking.

A taxi ride later (Emmeline, the taxis here are green like the inside of an avocado, instead of yellow) and we were at the university where Peace Corps in China has its administrative offices. The university is a massive city-within-a-city, and we walked from one end, from the dorm Bekah and two other volunteers are staying in, to the other, where they were just finishing a midnight second dinner.

Midway through dinner it started to pour down rain. It turns out this is the rainy season. The word “monsoon” has been mentioned several times.

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