After working in San Francisco for 2 months and 2 weeks, I got back to my home in China. Everything is so different between San Francisco and Guangzhou. And 25 days later, I am going back to Pittsburgh. Moving so frequently is a amazing experience. You will never feel bored of the places, but you always have a sadness of leaving the place that you have gotten used to.
San Francisco is a place with magic, although my friends don’t seem to love it. To be honest, if I had to choose a place to live for my entire life, I wouldn’t choose San Francisco, either. The endless mountain slopes and the smelly homeless people are still two of the biggest images in my head for San Francisco, but I am also glad that I got the chances to see the creative co-working places and the amazing nature views.
This is always my favorite way to travel a place. I love to stay in the place for a month or two, so that I have long enough time to actually learn about it. Thanks to this program, I got the chance to do it in San Francisco. I love how inclusive the city is. In San Francisco, you see people speaking different languages one the street, foods from different countries, and the most important thing, posters of election in different languages. I feel that people, no matter where they are from and what background they had before, have a life here that they are willing to work hard and fight for. Old Asian who speaks Cantonese in Chinatown, a busy German woman in the office, a homeless guy with his dog on the sidewalk… These people have their stories, some unique and interesting stories. They might be sad, might be positive, might be special, but they will always be some good stories. I wish I am a journalist and can do interviews for all these people, and write a book about them. I love how San Francisco becomes a home for them to live and work hard.
This city has some of my best memories. I made some amazing friends and went to trips that I would never forget. I don’t get a lot of changes to travel places usually. I am glad that I got the change to stay with these friends in San Francisco, because they always came up with the best plan for weekends! With them, I got to taste all the different kinds of food, Indian, Korean, Franch, Thai, Vietnamese and also Chinese food. I got to bike cross the golden gate bridge and found out how much I love biking. I got to take a nice sweet nap on baker beach, and I got to visit Napa. We played bowling and watch movies after work. I never imagine working in San Francisco could be this fun.
Beside what I learned from work, I am so happy that I got to experience all of these in San Francisco. I will never forget this summer!