It is a journey that never ends.

Before I spent three months working and traveling in the United States, this country to me was nothing more than an impression of being vast, free and powerful. However, during my stay, not only have I seen and understood the 'land of the free' personally, but also have grown an emotional connection with it and its people that makes my journey surprisingly meaningful and memorable.

If you had told me three months ago that I would like cooking and do it quite well, I would have said you were crazy. But that was indeed how I spend most of my time during my stay in the States. In an unexpected yet welcome concurrence, I worked as a cook at the coffee shop of a mountain resort in Pennsylvania named Seven Springs. There I made a vast array of American food: Coney dog, spring burger, vegetarian grinder, beef Reuben...you name it. In the busiest days, I served more than two hundred dishes a day without compromising the quality.

It was quite an accomplishment, but it was not good fun when being a cook also means facing the danger of being burnt and cut, removing nasty residues from the grill and moving stock around. Not a bit. In the beginning I could not help grumbling and questioning, 'is it what I come for?' I was once in lack of a reason to carry on. Obfuscated. Tired. Helpless.

Such negative feelings, fortunately, did not last when I realized my customers actually enjoyed my food and their satisfaction had become mine. I was very impressed and delighted by the appreciation I received for my cooking skills. There was once an old lady who asked the waitstaff my name, gave me a thumb-up and talked with me, and a man who called to the hotel counter just to say that the food was great. It was when I learned that food, far more than just feeding people's hunger, should provide pleasure. Since then, I was happy and proud to be the 'pleasure-giver', with grumbles replaced with smiles.

While being a cook taught me how to find meanings in hardship, traveling gave me insights on the American culture and made me evolve from an observer to a participant of it. It was in New York that I felt the sheer energy and dynamics of a metropolis. It was in Boston that I followed the Freedom Trail and developed an insatiable interest of American history. It was in Washington D.C. that I talked in both Mandarin and English with a young man, who worked for the federal government, about Sino-American relationships, our lives and even Chinese food.

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