Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 | Page 159

there the ship lost 25 crew and many more were sick for a long time. I spent all my time during that first month preparing soups that my grandmother used to make when I was sick, she had taught me how to cure lots of illnesses with different plants and foods, so I didn't get to see much of the country until the snow started to melt. When the snow completely melted I saw that America was beautiful. When we arrived on shore, we walked into the nearest town and I know this sounds crazy but I suddenly saw someone walking towards me and time froze, we both stopped and stared at each other, everyone around me blurred out except for him. We spoke, I can't remember who spoke first, we spoke different languages but it didn’t seem to matter. We saw each often after that and I tried to learn a few words of his language but time went by and soon we were going to leave and return home. The day before our ship sailed I saw him talking to the captain of the ship, it turned out he was looking for a job and he was a very good fisherman, he told the captain he would catch enough fish to feed the crew. So that was the beginning of my next big adventure and now I had someone to share every new experience with. Our journey home was both happy and sad, the ship had lost so many men and we would have to tell their families the terrible news upon our arrival home but happy because we had so many stories to share from around the world. We knew so much about how people lived in other countries and could use this knowledge to help us in the future. Even though we were surrounded by lots of precious jewels and had our chance to take money and gold many of us came to realise that the experiences we had were what made us rich and that no matter how different we all looked we were all really looking for the same thing, a family to love.