Same Train, Gabi. Same Train.

I was never sure how, as a native of Venezuela, Gabriella came to be part of a program whose first qualification was that one be a native speaker of English. Not to say her English was bad at all. She spoke it naturally and well, with only a few oddities from time to time. Her pronunciation of "hotel" with a primary stress instead of secondary stress (ho-tel vs hotel), for instance, was never an obstacle to us all knowing exactly where she wanted to go. But occasionally, just occasionally, Gabi just couldn't communicate.

On the way back from a weekend in Shanghai, five of us decided to stay in Suzhou for a couple of days while the rest of the group returned home. Damien bought our tickets and came back to explain that he had been unable to secure us all tickets of the same kind in the same compartment. Three tickets were sleepers and two were seats. He apologized, but the train we needed to catch home had only the three sleeper tickets left.

Four of us shrugged, took our tickets, and agreed to decide later who would get sleepers and who would make the long ride on seats. The fifth party stood still and stared. Gabi was confused.

She stood staring, intently focused on an invisible point and thinking, thinking hard.

"How are we all getting home again?"

"On the train, Gabi."

"But you said only three of us have sleepers."

"The other two have seats."

"On a different train?"

"On the same train."

"Oh! You mean . . . wait. Where?"

"What do you mean, 'where'?"

"So they're taking another train?"

"No, they're taking the same train."

"But you said only three of us have tickets."

"Three of you have tickets for sleepers. The other two have seats."

"On a different train?"

"On the same train, Gabi."

"Where?"

"Where on the train?"

"Yeah."

"In a different compartment."

"So they're not coming home with us?"

"They're on the same train."

"Will they get there later? Do we need to wait for them?"

"It's the same train, Gabi. You're all coming home on the same train."

"But . . ."

"Three of you have sleepers; two of you have seats. It's all the same train."

"But we'll get home at different times, right?"

"How would you do that? It's the same train."

"But we have different tickets."

"Three are sleepers and two are seats, yeah."

"So they're not riding with us."

"Yes. They are."

"Oh ok. They're just on a different train."

"No. They're on the same train. It's the same train."

"Oh I get it." Gabi nodded knowingly.

We all sighed in relief.

"So two of us will have to catch a different train?"

Addie, exasperated beyond control, sucked air in through tightly pursed lips and brought her hands, fingers tensely extended, up in front of her face. Bringing her hands violently together with each syllable, she growled through clenched teeth: "SAME TRAIN, GABI! SAME TRAIN!"

She never got it. Addie and I rode the seats. Eight hours overnight on hard seats being crowded by Chinese with no sense of personal space and little sense of personal hygiene was still preferable to trying to explain the complexities of train transportation to a confused Venezuelan in her second language.

Same train, Gabi. Same train.