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Back in May, I was on a two-week mini-tour of the US, when I made it to Washington, DC, for my final three days. We’re going to take a look at a chance meeting that happened there, which has stayed with me ever since 🇺🇸
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Thankfully, for my first day in DC, I had my friends Aidan and Carson to help me with my sightseeing, and we managed to get through so much more than I expected we would. I won’t go into everything we got up to there. If you’d like to find out more about that day, check out my DC wrap-up blog 🙂
On my final day, I had a little bit of spare time, so I decided to use it to walk back around all of my favourite spots 🚶
I started off doing the Tidal Basin Loop, where you can see all of the famous monuments, from the Lincoln Monument to the Jefferson one, Martin Luther King Jr’s incredible statue, to the Roosevelt water features. It’s a beautiful spot to walk around, I could talk about it for hours.
After walking around there, I decided to go and see the Capitol Building again. As I got there, I thought it’d make the perfect spot for a little photo, so I kept an eye out for somebody I could ask.
This is one of my favourite things about solo travelling, btw, you never know who you’re going to meet 👋
I met a Chinese man with his family, who was trying to take a photo of them all with a selfie stick. I offered to take one of them all, which he replied with: “That would be fantastic. Thank you so much”
He then offered to take my photo (which is the one above), and as he was about to go ahead with the rest of his day, he gave me a Chinese knot 🪢
When I kindly asked him why he was giving this to me, he said it was a sign of his gratitude, and the passing of a Chinese knot symbolises respect and gives luck to the receiver. Here is the knot in question:
This really touched me, and I’ll be honest, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face for the rest of the day – it was such a lovely thing to do 😌
It goes to show that you never know how far a small act of kindness can go – they all have the power to turn someone’s day around. I still carry the Chinese knot with me on my little trips away; it’s become a little lucky charm (quite literally).
That’s all for today’s blog, just a little personal, real story for you all this weekend. What do you think? What’s a small act of kindness that’s stayed with you?
I’d love to hear your thoughts 🙂
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a lovely day!
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