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Photography and Text by Wenjia Guo, Copyright 2018
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TRAVEL FRIENDS
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With increasingly people getting involved in my life, especially after a change to an English environment, I found myself more use for the word friend. Even chat with some strangers they may call you my friend. However, in Chinese environment, we seldom use the word friend, instead we call others the handsome or pretty, feeling that the word friend is kind of old fashioned. Then I asked myself, do I become more tolerant of friend’ s by definition? Do I cherish my new friends at Penn as well as my former friends? Then I find this closeness is more of a social ritual for me, to those real friends I may seldom express my love to.
A recent travel week for me was a huge opportunity to tell if my classmates are my friends. To me, they are much more like comrade-in-arms, study at Penn is a war, you fight with time, you fight with easy life, you fight with tiredness. Study is kind of the only past communication between us, since the studio almost took all of our lives. I know they are hardworking, they are smart, but those are not the most important characters of me as a friend. I want my friends to be kind and honest, which is the ingrained rule I set for myself. So, during the trip to Miami, I paid more attention to people around me than the wonderful beach views. We almost drank and smoked a Huka every day, we shared our stress, our dreams, our love stories and our fears. These people became much more vivid and they really participated in my life. Now I can say, people in my camera world are my friends.
This travel week was so unreal, we spent a week in Miami’s summer while Philadelphia was still covered with snow. We had a party on yacht without any stressful academic pressure. I may forget that week and feel like it was a dream, but I will always remember my friends.
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About The Author: Wenjia Guo is a Graduate student in the School of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania. To access additional articles by Wenjia Guo, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/wenjia-guo-mini-fab-lab/