Where in the world

A friend sent me an email and called me out on the fact that I haven't been blogging as much. It's true, I admit. I'm hoping to reverse that trend soon, but the honest truth is that I have been extremely busy. It's been nuts at home and at work. I'm not going to go into detail (yet?) on this blog because it is a public blog and there are certain things that I don't need in print that might hang me later. Let's just say work has become a bit frustrating of late. One of my co-workers was fired/quit (depends on who you talk to), my office mate quit today, and the other analyst has cut her hours down from 5 days a week to 3. That just leaves me standing. And I am leaving on my big ass vacation in a few weeks. I haven't had a vacation in....well, I don't recall. Not since I was laid off in summer of 2007, and trust me, that was no vacation. I am going to take all my PTO and blow it at one great vacation. I deserve to treat myself a little (or a lot) because it has been an incredibly challenging year.

I am really looking forward to getting away and visiting with Chennie and Peter. I'm hoping we will get some really good dim sum. Short of living around San Fran, it's impossible to find decent dim sum in the states. I'm looking forward to the busy streets and the smells of a large Asian city. It just doesn't compare to any Western city anywhere. I actually enjoy the discombobulated feeling of stepping off the plane and realizing "I'm in a foreign country" and every thing feels new, strange and foreign. I feel most alive in those moments--when I have no footing and am forced to find my balance once again. I feel like I am living on the edge with no one to tell me what to do or where to go. There is a freedom and a bit of risk in realizing that at that moment no one actually knows where you are in the world.

Hong Kong was a coming of age city for me and still holds an incredible place in my heart. For those that know me well they will be surprised to know that I was once a very quiet, doubting person. Until at the age of fifteen when I traveled to Hong Kong to spend the summer with a foreign exchange student I met. There were no background checks or forms to fill out--I didn't travel with some sort of student exchange. I was just a girl visiting another girl's home land. It was awesome. It was the first time I had been away from my parents for any extended period of time and had NO contact with them. At that time English was not widely spoken and signs were all in Cantonese. I can count the number of non-Chinese that I saw that summer on one hand. It was absolute culture immersion and I loved it. I had to learn to navigate the city by myself with no grasp of the language. I grew up. After I came home I didn't have doubts about the decisions I made--right or wrong. I wasn't afraid of screwing up. I always knew that I was interested in different people, but I think that laid the groundwork for my future schooling as an anthropologist.

When I started this post I was going to talk about the fire-breathing chili cook-off the IS department hosted today. It's a big deal; like Christmas for nerds. I was going to tell you about Tony's "Farm" Chili which actually included animals from his farm (and he doesn't have cows or pigs so try not to think too hard about that one). Instead I am looking ahead and remembering the summer I grew up and became an adult and about the city that gave that to me. I can't wait for my new adventure to begin.