Our Fairy Godmother's Apprentice

Amber flew off to Hong Kong in April. Five months, an overseas internship at Hong Kong Disneyland, and the first time she would be living on her own, far from home.

Celest and I sent her off on her first day of work. We stood at the entrance with her, the castle somewhere behind us, and took a photo. She was nervous but putting on a brave face, the way she does.

Amber is actually doing an engineering-related diploma at the poly. So when she told us her role at Disneyland, we had to pause and make sure we heard her right. Fairy Godmother's Apprentice. At the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.

If the name means nothing to you, it comes from the old Cinderella cartoon. When the Fairy Godmother waves her wand and turns a pumpkin into a carriage and a servant girl into a princess ready for the ball, she sings the magic words. Bibbidi bobbidi boo. It is complete nonsense, of course. That is the whole charm of it. And they named a real boutique after it, where real children come to be turned into princes and princesses. I cannot say the words out loud without smiling.

Her job was to put on makeup and princess clothing, welcome the children in, and tap a magic wand on them to cast the spell.

She was not impressed with herself. This has nothing to do with my course, she said. It felt silly. Grown woman, glitter, a wand, a spell. She could not see the point of it.

And it did not help that she and her manager did not get along at first. Hong Kong can be a direct place. People say what they think, quickly and without much cushioning, and when you add a language and culture gap on top of that, a lot gets lost. Amber took it hard in the early weeks. She would call home and we could hear it in her voice.

Then something happened, slowly, the way these things always do.

The days became weeks. The weeks became months. In June, Nigel, Shannon and I went up to visit her, and the girl we found at work was not the same one who left in April. She knew the place. She knew her colleagues. She knew exactly how to kneel down to a shy four year old, wave the wand, and watch the child light up. The thing she had called silly, she was now quietly proud of.

By the time we came back for her final few days, she did not want to leave.

That part did not really surprise me. I had watched it happen over the months. She had made good friends. She had the freedom to explore a new city and she took it, learning the trains, finding her way around, discovering food she now cannot stop talking about, falling for the culture and the shopping. Once you have tasted that kind of independence, coming home was always going to be hard.

The girl who found it all pointless in April had built a whole life over there. A routine that was hers. A way of managing her own time, her own money, her own small problems, without calling home first. In the early weeks she would call and we could hear the homesickness in her voice. By the middle of it, those calls had quietly dried up. The regular texts disappeared too, and Celest and I found ourselves reaching out every once in a while just to check in, half joking that we needed to remind her we still existed. Even the manager she once dreaded had become someone she understood. The independence had stopped feeling scary and started feeling like home.

We stood outside Disneyland with her and her grandparents on one of her last days. Grandma and Grandpa had wanted to see the place their granddaughter had spent her summer, and Amber walked them through it like a local.

The thing that stayed with me came later, at the airport back home. When Amber landed, there was a small welcoming party waiting for her. Fellow interns who had flown back to Singapore just days and weeks before, who had come down to the airport to meet her off the plane. Our quiet, shy girl had gone off alone and come back with people who would make their way all the way out to the airport to greet her at arrivals. Those are the kind of friendships that last a lifetime, and she had turned five months in a princess boutique into exactly that.

Here is what I have come to think about overseas internships, watching Amber go through hers. The work is almost the smallest part of it. Whether or not the job matches the course is not really the point. What she actually learned was how to live. How to be far from the people who love her and still be okay. How to make a friend from nothing, in a new city, in a job she did not choose. How to get along with someone difficult instead of just avoiding them. How to fill a fridge, keep a schedule, and stretch a paycheck.

She left in April thinking she had signed up for five months of playing dress up. She came home in August having grown up.

And she still has the wand.