keeping in touch

This was a good weekend for e-mail. Our friends, Randy and Julia, who live in Hangzhou, China sent us an e-mail response saying they would be visiting this area again next week! I sent an e-mail to Leo (Jia Litao) who lives in Shenyang (northern China) as we haven't 'talked' in several weeks. I exchanged 2 e-mails with Bill (Zhu Yin Le) who is a student at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. It's been great to get to know him this year. I sent an e-mail to Hongru, who used to live here but she went back to China with her husband and daughter to live and work. . . and then my friend, Tamer Hanna, who I came to know fairly well several years ago. He is back in Egypt and keeps in touch via e-mail.
E-mail is so cool - it makes the world 'smaller'! These people have all enriched my life in one way or another. Reminds me of this poem - in that we're not alone.
***

Alone
by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.