Ming Lu logged off her computer with a puzzled frown fixed on her face. “Ming! Come help us pack!”

“Coming mother!” Ming shouted back to her mother in Cantonese. She closed her laptop that she got with her scholar ship and ran out of her room to help with the packing.

The next day, Ming found herself on the plane to the U.S.A. She couldn’t wait. The schools there sounded very hard. She smiled to herself and shivered in anticipation. Ming’s mother looked at her, “Ming,” she said in Cantonese, “Are you cold?”

“No mother. I’m just so excited to be here!”

A/N Whenever Ming is talking with her family, she is talking in Cantonese. Her parents and her older brother can speak English but they prefer not to when they are speaking to each other.

Ming’s mother smiled lovingly at her daughter, “Ming, you can’t believe how happy we are to be here.”

“I know mom! Isn’t it just awesome?”

Ming’s mother laughed at her daughter’s excitement, “Calm down, Ming. It will be a long ride to our new country and we will need to fill out many papers. Then we will have to ride to our new house and get unpacked. We are lucky to be getting there on a weekend. You will have a day to settle in before you got to school. Sleep for now, Ming. I’ll wake you up when we reach the U.S.A.”

“Okay.”

“Ming. Ming. MING!”

“Mgh?”

“Ming get up, we’re there.”

“Really?” Ming bolted up in her seat, now wide-awake and ready for her first glimpse of America. She plastered her face on the window and strained her eyes looking at the land below them. She exclaimed happily, “Mom! I see something!”

Ming’s mom chuckled, “Of course you do.”

“Mom! I can see trees…and and and and…houses! Wow, they are so far apart…and the streets are so clean!”

Ming’s brother, Po Wing, snorted at Ming’s exclamation, “Of course there are trees. What did you expect to see? Plastic?”

Ming turned and glared at Po, “Shut up, Po. Don’t be so sarcastic.”

Suddenly, Ming’s family heard the announcement in English, “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your seatbelts on. We are descending to the New York National airport in approximately fifteen minutes. When you see a red light, you are safe to take off your seatbelts.”

Ming’s dad spoke up, “Well, I guess from now on we will have to get used to everybody speaking English. But I want us to keep using Cantonese when we are with each other. I don’t want our first language to die.”

Ming and Po nodded their heads to show that they understood their father’s wishes. They felt the plane descend and then they saw the red light go on. Automatically, Ming’s family took off their seatbelts. The voice came back on, “Ladies and gentlemen, you are free to take your bags and descend from the plane. I hope you had a pleasant ride.”

A many hours later, Ming flopped down onto her new bed. She and her family had been moving in their things and arranging it to their taste. The furniture had already been there in the house, luckily. All they had to do was put their own sheets on it and unpack their boxes from the moving truck. Tomorrow, they would unpack and get used to their surroundings. Thinking of her new school, she drifted to sleep.

The next morning, Ming woke up to find that she had slept in. She jumped out of her bed and headed for her bathroom. A little later, she came back out and headed for the kitchen. She found her mother cooking lunch and her brother sitting at the kitchen island reading the newspaper. She looked around, “Where’s dad?”

“Dad already went to work. We better start unpacking. You and I start school tomorrow.”

“Wow, dad’s new workplace can’t give him a day off before they start working him, huh?”

“This company was really eager to take him in. I guess they heard of his good work from his old job,” replied Po, closing the newspaper, “I think he’s working at someplace called…Inel?”

“Intel, “ corrected Ming’s mother, Su Fong, “We are going to have to go shopping too. We need some spices and some vegetables and meat. Tomorrow, I start working too. You and Ming will have to walk to school. The school should be close enough to walk to. It would probably take about 15 minutes.”

Ming and Po shrugged in indifference, Po said as he sifted through the newspaper to the classified section, “If we had to, we could run and end up there in no more than… 5 minutes?”

Ming nodded her head in agreement. When they were in China, she and Po were in track. Po was one of the fastest in their school. Ming was fast, but not as fast as Po or any of his friends. Su continued, “Well, I think your uniform came to us in the mail. If you want a look at it, it’s sitting in the living room.”

Ming ran out from the kitchen, her soft slippers hitting the carpet in soft thwaps. She opened the box and glanced in. She pulled out the uniform and discovered that the girls’ uniform was a knee length black skirt with white ankle socks and black shoes. The top included a short-sleeved white cotton blouse and a black vest. There was a white ribbon with the school emblem on the edge to tie under the collar. The winter uniform was basically the same thing except that the vest turned into a black jacket with additions of white gloves, white scarf, and black hat, all with the school emblem. The guys’ uniform had black long pants with white ankle socks and black shoes. The top was the same as the girls with no ribbon; instead, they got a white tie. The winter uniform was the same as the summer uniform except that the vest turned into a blazer. They had the same winter accessories as the girls. Ming couldn’t wait to try it on, but instead, she gathered up all of her parts of the uniform and went upstairs to put it away. Following that, she started to unpack the rest of her clothes and other things. She stopped when her mother called out that it was lunchtime.

She walked downstairs and started to eat lunch. Po asked her from his place next to her, “What’s the uniform like?”

“It’s really cool! Yours are still in the box in the living room.”

“Mm, I should get it. I’m going to have to organize it.”

“Are you going to join track here too?”

“Yeah.”

Su spoke up, “Are you going to join track, Ming?”

“I don’t know yet. I might.”

“Does one of you want to go shopping with me?”

Ming looked up from her plate and raised her pair of chopsticks, “I’ll go if you want.”

Po nodded, “I still have a lot of things to unpack. I haven’t even started yet.”

Su frowned and started to scold her son for lack of responsibility. Ming shoveled the rest of her lunch into her mouth and asked to be excused. Ming’s mother looked up from her half finished lunch, “Go ahead, you want to finish unpacking your things don’t you?”

Ming nodded and looked toward her brother, “Po, you want me to bring up your uniform for you? I’m stopping by the living room anyways and your room is on the way to mine.”

“Sure. Just throw it on my bed.”

Ming nodded and exited the room. True to her word, she stopped by the living room to pick up Po’s uniform and her last box of clothes. She had already finished unpacking her extra things and she had nearly finished her clothes. After this box, she would officially be done unpacking. Then, she would go shopping with her mother. A while later, Ming straightened up from her crouch next to her drawers and smiled, “Whew, I’m finally done!”

She took her empty boxes and headed for the basement to put them away. Passing by Po’s room, she paused and knocked on the door. She stuck her head in and asked him, “Do you need to take any boxes down to the basement? I’m heading there now.”

“Yeah, take these,” and he piled a bunch of boxes into Ming’s arms. Ming blinked and asked in muffled voice, “Did you finish unpacking everything?”

Po smirked and said, “Yes.”

“How’d you finish so fast?”

“I am a fast unpacker.”

“Humph. Whatever.”

Walking to the kitchen after dropping off the boxes, she saw her mom. “Mom, I’m ready to go shopping now.”

TBC