Mid-Autumn Festival today. I have been thoroughly consumed by the US-TC puzzles, but since this assignment is already written, I might as well post it here and pad the diary count (

A Different Mid-Autumn Festival

It is the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month: Mid-Autumn Festival. I sit alone in my dorm, gazing through the window at the bright full moon. My family may be far away, but I am not truly alone. Around me are many brothers and sisters who have become family in the truest sense.

Before coming to LETU, I heard all sorts of things about America. A friend I met in Shanghai who also studies here warned me in particular about discrimination. He said that Asian Americans—a strange phrase to my ears—often occupy a lower place in American society. He advised me to join a campus group as soon as possible or risk becoming isolated. I knew I was not someone who could easily strike up a conversation with strangers, and I worried about it a great deal. In those days, one prayer appeared again and again: “Lord, please help me take more initiative.”

Once I actually arrived at LETU, however, I found something entirely different. The Office of Global Initiatives helped me enormously as I adjusted to the culture and pace of study here. People across campus were kind and eager to talk. A professor spent more than an hour helping me map out four years of study. Many students were open and enthusiastic—and all of them seemed better at table tennis than I was. They often invited me to play.

As someone deeply shaped by Chinese tradition, I have always loved poetry and the ancient feeling held within it. Su Shi’s famous Mid-Autumn poem contains the line: “May we live long, and share the moon’s beauty though a thousand miles apart.” I may be far from my homeland, but my family and I look up at the same moon—though, of course, not at the same moment. More importantly, we look up to the same Father in heaven.