'All go players are family'

I've mentioned this in my last post, but I recently got to enjoy the great thing that is playing go in person. This week I went to the meeting again, and it was great fun. There were even more people this time, as most of the members were in Japan last week.
I also got a bit more of a general introduction, and it turns out that all the regular members have a dan rank (the strongest being around 6 dan I think), aside from one person who is around 1 kyu. And lucky me, they said they are happy to play with me and teach me.

Now I live pretty far outside of the city, which means that I am travelling about 1 hour by public transport because public transport over here sucks. I really don't mind though, because it's still a lot better than sitting at home on my own.
When I told them this, they immediately started discussing something in Chinese (or well, a mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Malay) and then told me that from now on I can call two people to give me a ride. Everyone has a car and they said there were some people living nearby who don't mind making a little detour. Super nice.
After we finished playing we went for dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and one guy had an iPad with tsumego. He kept choosing really hard ones, and then showed them to the strongest player for him to solve. After a while they turned to me and gave me some quite easy ones. Only I am horrible at tsumego. But who am I not to even try. After solving one, he showed me the next one. If I didn't solve it I would have to pay for dinner for everyone, which was quite a good motivator. I did solve it, and the next one too. In the end dinner was paid for me. Once again, super nice.
At the end of the evening I got a lift back, and when I thanked him, for well, everything, he said something that touched me a bit.

'All go players are family.'

This might sound super cheesy, but I'm in a foreign country on my own. I don't really know anybody very well and my family is on the other side of the world. Even though this is my own choice, and I am definitely not regretting it, I have felt a little lonely the past few weeks. So this made me feel a little emotional (in a good way). I mean, I have met these people once or twice, and they're so amazingly nice.

TLDR; I am going to get strong, Malaysians are awesome, go players are even more awesome and I'm emotional.

Sorry for the boring post but:



Also, apparently they have put my rank on +/- 3 kyu for now. Which, in relation to my last post, doesn't really make sense. Maybe they're wrong, or I play a lot worse on the internet. Whichever it is, it can't be bad thing :).