An Immigration Story.

{Can I Instagram on this thing?}

As a post grad, Dad was thrilled to get to come to the States as an exchange student to the University of Minnesota's graduate school.  

This was a huge deal; he grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and was the first person he or anyone he knew had ever heard of that was able to leave China.  Literally no one he had every encountered had ever had any reference for moving beyond the Land of the Not Free.  

So when he made his travel arrangements, he had to get the flight information to the university staff who were coming get him.  Dad had no idea how to place an international phone call; didn't even know it existed as an option.  So he sent the UM Dept of Agriculture a telegram, detailing his arrival time and flight number.  A TELEGRAM!  Like Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman!  This was 1985!

He got on the plane (requisite small amount of cash in his pocket) and arrived at MSP, looking around expectantly for someone who might be looking for him.  Nothing.  After a while of waiting, no one was there for him.  So he wandered over to the payphone area of baggage claim, busy with bustling travelers calling family and making plans.  He spots a young mom trying to place a phone call while keeping hold of a rambunctious toddler running circles around the phone booths.  As he tells it, he strikes a deal with her through a series of pantomimes and broken Chinglish:  he will watch her kid so she can place her phone call, and then she will help him call someone to come get him.  The arrangement worked perfectly, and dad was able to get ahold of the professor who was in charge of him.  Two weeks later, this same professor comes by my dad's desk in the research lab where he was working.  He chuckles, and drops the telegram my dad had sent in front of him.  He told him it was the first telegram he had ever received.  Ha!  Isn't that embarrassing?!