Although Sissy was a girl, she was fearless. She hired a tour guide to take her out for the sunrise shoot. When she planned to leave, Sissy met Armando on the way. After taking a few pictures of him, she found the man attractive, so she decided to stay.
For those several days on the mountain, Armando sent the kids to school on the other side of the river. A female teacher always stood on the opposite riverbank and looked at Armando bashfully, but he never said hello to her.
Once a woman wanted to cross the river, Armando didn't help her. Instead, he carried the elder standing next to the woman on his back across the river. Sissy was busy taking photos for him. "Why don't you help the woman?"
She thought Armando would say craps like 'boys and girls aren't supposed to be socializing,' but he didn't. Armando just lowered his head and whispered something to her. At that time, Sissy's heart skipped a beat.
"Let's dance!"
More and more people danced around the bonfire, and Sissy was one of them. After one round of dancing, she invited Armando in.
"I'm a bad dancer." Armando waved his hand.
But Sissy grasped his hand and wouldn't let him go, "When in Rome, do as the Roman do. Come on. Let's go. I'll teach you."
So, Armando had to move his hips along with her.
Sissy burst out laughing after seeing this.
Armando looked at her with a straight face.
The locals around were also laughing at him, and they said some words Armando didn't understand. "What did they say?" Armando asked.
"They said you were a funny guy," Sissy told a lie.
Actually, the local people said they were a perfect match for each other.
They didn't know that Armando and Sissy only knew each other for less than half a month.
"What brings you here?" After the dance party, they took a break and sat together. Sissy passed him a sliced mutton leg, "I asked you the first time I met you, but you didn't tell me."
"What about you?" Armando turned the question back to her.
Sissy put her head in her hands and gazed at the bonfire thoughtfully, "I come here for taking photos, and I want them to be popular."
Armando tried the goat milk wine, but its strong taste made him hard to swallow. Sissy grinned, took out a bottle of water, and handed it to him, "Here you are. Drink this."
Armando didn't take it. He was going to bite the bullet and finish the alcohol.
"You really are..." Sissy put her water back, "a weirdo I met once in a lifetime."
There was only a tent, and Armando insisted on sleeping outside alone in the cold wind, but Sissy never said that she would mind sharing the same tent with him.
Armando lost his luggage on the mountain when he helped an old man with weak legs cross the river. He left his backpack on the riverbank, but it was gone when he returned.
Losing things on the trip was common. One might lose your wallet or phone if he was not careful.
It didn't seem to bother Armando a little. However, when Sissy finished her camera work on the mountain and heard about the news, she got mad at it. She helped him get his luggage back the next day. In the evening, Sissy asked Armando to get in the tent, but he refused and slept outside with a blanket given by the locals.
The following day when Sissy got up, she found Armando had already been in the river to do his job. The routine was always the same: helping the kids to cross back and forth the river. The female teacher was standing on the opposite riverbank and looking at him with adoring eyes as always, but Armando still ignored her.
Sissy took the scene into her camera, and she looked at the man in the photo, thinking, 'He's quite responsible."
Many people knew Armando because he helped a lot here. When they heard that he lost his backpack, everyone went out to find it. Soon, they found the bag from a habitual thief. The thief took away the money from the wallet, but the phone was still there.
Armando only took the card and wallet, and then he gave all his money in the bag to the thief.
The thief was stunned for a long time. Perhaps it was the first time he met a man like Armando.
The local Tibetans were talking about him and even cursing. Sissy translated, "They said that the thief is shameless, and he steals your things. They even tell you not to give him money. He is a habitual thief and will never change."
Armando didn't listen and decided to give him money. The thief was probably just a kid but with dark skin and a skinny figure. He was much shorter than Armando, perhaps because he always huddled up to look even shorter than he was.
"Tell him I give him money, and he helps me send the kids to school," said Armando.
The thief could understand his language and look at Armando in surprise. "You ... believe me?"
Here was remote, and the Mandarin was not really being spread across the population. The tourism industry only thrived around the Lhasa and Potala Palace, so seldom locals spoke Mandarin. When Armando first arrived here and wanted to help a kid cross the river, the locals thought he was a human trafficker.
"I trust you," Armando gave him the money and asked, "Do you have a bank card? Told me your account, and I will transfer money to your account on the twenty-tenth of every month."
"What? You send me money?" The thief widened his eyes in disbelief.
Armando nodded and asked again, "Do you have a bank card?"
The thief shook his head, awkwardly scratching his head, "They... don't believe..."
Armando helped him talk to the locals. They didn't trust the habitual thief, so they would try to beat him to death or serious injury every time they saw him steal things.
In the past few years, tourists' luggage was turned out to be the main source of his income. Most of the booty was invaluable. Even if it was worth a lot of money, the owners could only leave grumpily. There was no police station here, so they had no way to file a case. There was nothing they could do.
But Armando was special. He helped the locals a lot so that they couldn't turn a blind eye to this. Almost overnight, they found out the habitual thief.
The locals were ready to beat him to death, but they were all surprised by Armando's behavior. Armando gave him money and even offered him a job. Armando chatted with the thief for half an hour, and they finally signed a treaty. The thief swore in awkward Mandarin.
"If there is any violation, bad things should happen to me."
There were many temples in Tibet, so the residents believed in Buddhism. Armando didn't worry that the thief would break his promise.., because the Buddha would punish him.