Sihpromatum - Backpacks and Bra Straps by Grace Savannah

Author:Grace, Savannah [Grace, Savannah]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Sihpromatum Publishing House
Published: 2014-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

School-To-Go

24

“With the dunes being such a bust, we’ve actually done nothing here except eat,” Ammon had said the night before, “so I say we should just keep moving forward. Tomorrow we head to Tibet.” Just like that, the few days we’d planned to spend in Dunhuang were cut short, and we were once again waiting for an overnight bus that would take us directly south to Golmud. We intended to stay there just long enough to get permits for Tibet. If that went smoothly, it would be a direct shot over the mountains to Tibet’s capital city, Lhasa.

“That’s one big advantage of being on a long-term trip with no set plans,” Ammon said, after closing his Lonely Planet and giving us the rundown. “We can just come and go whenever we want. You can try to plan things, but you don’t really know if you’re going to like a place until you actually get there.”

As we sat on our bags in the noisy bus station the next morning, fanning ourselves with the cards Bree had just dealt us, a cluster of local men gathered round to watch our ongoing game of Jerk. The Chinese loved playing board games and checkers on the sidewalks, and they were more curious about our game than the people in any other country we’d visited. Jerk required switching our seating arrangements each round, depending on our rankings. This always threw off any onlookers trying to learn the game from watching us play.

A tanned traveller with a dark goatee and long, perfectly groomed hair popped up at Ammon’s side, pointed down at the centre pile of cards, and said, “Oh, that must be Diafugo. Is a very nice hand.” One of our ESL students had taught us the Japanese version of the game, but this was the first time on our trip that anyone had recognized it.

The stranger’s comment provided a good excuse to end our game before the locals took it over, so Mom swept up the cards and put them in their box. Every once in a while, people in a crowd much like the one that had now started to form around our game would gradually invite themselves in to play, and before we knew it, the game would change, we’d lose our cards to them, and we’d be left sitting on the sidelines. When our bus or train arrived, it was always a challenge to get the deck back without disappointing them.

“Yes. It’s our favourite game ever,” Bree piped up with a big smile.

“How long you are playing this game?” That’s a new one, I thought, expecting a more common question like, “How long have you been travelling?” or “Where have you been?” But I knew those questions would come soon enough – they always did. I answered them proudly these days, ‘cause we’d been on the road long enough that I no longer felt like a complete travel rookie.

“Ammon is in the lead and has three-thousand, two hundred and eighteen points.”

“That is very long time you are playing,” he said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.