Anthony Galli

When I was in sixth grade, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime to travel to China and adopt my sister Valerie. I had to leave school in the middle of fall semester for 2 weeks. Which they actually gave us a lot of grief for because I would miss so much school that it would be “impossible” for me to catch up. So to make them happy, I had to do schoolwork throughout my stay in China which was a little bit annoying but I can sort of understand where they were coming from. We had an amazing time in China. We did all of the tourist spots (Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven etc.) and found restaurants that gave us authentic local food.

However the most amazing part of the whole trip was to see my sister Valerie for the very first time. The start of a new chapter for my family. She was very shy and quiet (which was expected) and she didn’t talk much throughout the whole rest of the trip. There was one incident that happened though because of our lack of communication though and it was at the airport.

Valerie had a backpack with her when we met her and she took it with her. There were typical school supplies in the backpack, including scissors. So when we were at the airport, the metal detectors went off when they scanned the backpack and about seven security officers came running toward us. They were yelling in Chinese and my parents were trying to communicate and understand what was going on. It took them about half an hour to find what sent the metal detectors off and it was a pair of children’s scissors, as blunt as can be. From then on, we make sure to check everyone’s bag because no one wants a repeat of that, ever again.