Two stories from my trip
1/12/20 Happy 2020! I am finally back to work after a lengthy and challenging maternity leave. I found many things in academia are changing, and I am just like a fresh graduated graduate student, having nothing in my hands but some ambition. Cheers to those who have always supported me! Thinking of your smiling faces, I feel full of energies. I am still figuring out what I want to do for my work and life.
We were at the top of the rock of Gibraltar. There were quite a few bad-ass-looking monkeys sat on the rocks and stared at us. A group of tourists were taking pictures. Suddenly, a muscular monkey dashed over the crowds and directly ran towards my mom who were standing at the back of the crowd. The monkey tried to grab my mom’s orange bag. My mom and the monkey started to fight and the bag was broken at the handle. The monkey then digged into her bag and robbed a banana. Everything happened so quick within seconds. Nobody was able to react fast enough to help her. My dad walked out of the bathroom and heard the story. He said with a serious expression “why don’t you guard your bag properly” Oh, my poor mom! I patted her shoulder and laughed so hard.
Another story happened in Lisbon. We were taking this “tuk tuk” back from a tourist cite. The driver was super enthusiastic and nice. He asked for a very cheap price and introduced interesting buildings along our way. Then suddenly, in the middle of 5-lane high-wayish road, his “tuk tuk” started to make weird noises and finally broken down (we must be too heavy to break his tuk tuk). It was scary as we stopped at a blind spot of a curvy road where the traffic is 60 miles per hour. We carried our stuffs passing 5 lanes of busy traffic and finally reached the other side of the road like some action movie. We also helped the driver to move to the safe spot. Then I just realized that we were in the middle of nowhere with a pair of panic parents. Luckily, one taxi stopped. Although it is too small to fit all of us, the driver walked out of his taxi and tried to help us find another bigger taxi … I met a few more nice people later on and it makes me really fall in love with Lisbon.
