Aunty Jasmin – The Storyteller

She had the soul of a gypsy, the heart of a hippie and the spirit of a fairy.

I have hundreds of anecdotes of my life. And this is the one story I chose for today and I hope it’s a good weekend starter for you.

I was a freshman at college in the Netherlands. It was exam day. Mathematics. In English language. Not that I had ever understood math in German.

Our college was weird, so they just gave us a strange location of where to write the exam. A hall somewhere in no man’s land. I had no smartphone at that time. So I checked a map and hopped into a bus. There were five Chinese talking math equations in that bus, so I relaxed as I was sure they knew where this hall was.

So we got out and I started following them. For like half an hour. Then I realized something was off. I caught up and asked them ‘Do you know where the Stadjershal is?’ Ten Chinese eyes were on me. ‘No! Do you?’ And I said ‘Yes!’

So from that second on I had five Chinese following me. Five brilliant brains that NEEDED to write that math exam. My responsibility. And my sense for orientation was even worse than my math skills.

So I jumped over a huge shadow called culture shock and I started talking to strangers, in English which was not my mother language. I asked for directions. Five Chinese guys behind me nodding each time. The clock was ticking backwards. We were running. Six minutes before they closed the door, I got them to that Stadjershal.

My heart was beating like crazy sitting on that chair in this huge hall with more than 100 students. And then the adviser said ‘I’m sorry! We don’t have enough math exams for everyone!’

Long story short… All five Chinese passed the math exam. I failed. That’s when I was contacted by a brilliant Chinese girl. She spent her whole summer teaching me math. She made me pass math. Karma.

She turned her cant’s into cans and her dreams into plans!