It rained last night. But not today. It had been a typical day in the San Francisco Bay Area, sunny and warm. No rain in the forecast for the next twenty-four hours. The recent months had brought in much needed rain in California, and the drought-stricken land couldn’t handle it. Flooding and mudslides had caused damages in many areas throughout the Golden State.
Was the drought over? Who knew? The trees and the grass, the meadows and the hills couldn’t be happier. They turned green again. Almost like beautiful Asian green!
Sam had been packing all day for his long journey home to Asia, where the trees and the grass were always green—the Land of the Monsoons. He wasn’t a nature freak, nor did he have the time to obsess over it. However, every now and then the little free time he spent in the solarium-style living room in his beautiful Palo Alto home, he enjoyed looking at the leaves on the trees as they swayed in the soft breeze, especially when they were this green. He found it calming. Perhaps these trees whose names he didn’t know, reminded him of his childhood home in a faraway land?
Pacing around the house in shorts, T-shirt, and slippers, his eyes glanced at the clock in the hallway. It read 2:55 p.m. Nora would be here around six, he had time. He walked over to his bedroom to finish packing. Two large suitcases lay flat open on the soft, freshly-scented carpet. A few items on the table also needed to go inside a suitcase. He grabbed the long checklist from the bed and found to his delight that the most items had already been checked. He placed a couple of last-minute items in one of the suitcases: two containers of mosquito repellent, a stack of earplugs in a plastic container to last for months, and an all-in-one AC/DC converter for all his electronic devices.
