Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was tired - her mother had been taking her from door to door all morning looking for ... what exactly? She wasn't sure, but she knew more than her mother thought she did. She watched the kids play who weren't her.

She was the product of two Peace Corps volunteers, and this adventure teaching English in China was the next step. AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, MercyCorps, and now the less valiantly named R4 English Tutoring. She should have been starting second grade this year, but she never brought that up. She only knew because of American TV. Her mother had only brought up school once that she could remember, and that was in the abstract.

This doorway is, in a sense, where she'll spend the rest of her life. Her father has gone off on another string of humanitarian commitments, in another city, another country, another language. She always watch, but never quite be, one of the kids playing stickball.