A friend and I wanted to travel to China a few years ago. It was my first out of the country trip, and I was very excited. She left all the details to me and I happily booked the tickets, applied for our visas, drew up our itinerary, and most important of all, arranged our stay with various hosts. Her task was to bring her mobile phone and make sure it would work in Shanghai.

The day of our flight came. I was so excited I paced around the international airport, giddy as a child at the thought of seeing a foreign country for the first time. I thought of our first host, an English teacher from Scotland, and I looked forward to meeting him later that night.

When we arrived just before midnight in the Pudong airport, I asked my friend to call our host, using the phone she had set to roaming back in our country. She called once, twice, three times—to no avail! She was not able to contact him at all.

When we looked closely at the message from her service provider, we realized that China was listed as one of the countries that her phone would not work in. We were at a loss. We didn't know what to do. We discussed possibilities, such as sleeping in the airport (we didn't know if we could), hopping on a cab and asking to be taken to a nearby hotel (we didn't have much money), and so on and so forth.

We were still standing in the baggage area, debating what to do, when a Frenchwoman, a fellow passenger, approached us. She had heard us talking, and though she did not understand the words, she could clearly sense the emotions behind them.

I explained our dilemma to her, telling her that without the means to contact our host, we had nowhere to stay that night. The Frenchwoman did not even think about it. She immediately invited us to stay with her that night. She would not take no for an answer, and it was with much gratitude that we accepted.

The Frenchwoman did not know us, and yet she opened her home to us willingly. Until now, I have never forgotten her act of kindness on my first night in a foreign country.