The State of Moi

Okay, first things first.

1) I did not get the Canada position.
2) I cried buckets of tears over it. I really felt like sh*t then.
3) Last Sept 9, I left Cebu to be reassigned to the Ortigas office.
4) Last Sept 19, Round 2 of the Expatriation process began.
5) On that day, I applied for the position of Deputy Manager for Internal Communication for Greater China Area (GCA) - a MISE Mandarin position which means it will entail 4.5 months of learning the Mandarin Language and a 3-year expatriation (as opposed to the normal 2 years).
6) On Sept 22, the hiring manager interviewed me in the morning and offered me the job in the afternoon.
7) I had my despedida last Sept 23.
8) I left for Beijing last Sept 28.
9) I am now in my room in the Conference Center of the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU).

Sorry. I wasn't in the mood to weave all of the above events into a cohesive paragraph. As a matter of fact I am still quite exhausted by the pace at which all of these events took place. To say that it was rushed is an understatement.

I arrived here only yesterday a little past lunchtime. I lugged 3 suitcases totalling to 74 kgs (I'm not joking and the excess baggage fee is no f'ing joke either) from BLCU's South Gate to the Conference Center - for some reason, my taxi didn't take me inside the campus, and believe me you'd have no patience to ask for an explanation.

Classes started today for me. My other 4 classmates (Andrea, Brendan, Joakim and Tine, all from my MISE batch) have already had 2 days' worth of classes which means I'm trying real hard to catch up with them. It is a very intensive class, like a juice concentrate of the Mandarin Language if you will. Imagine trying to cram 1 year's worth of language lessons in 4.5 months. At the end of the day, it can leave you exhausted. But I promised myself that I will try really hard to learn as much as I can. I want to make the most out of this opportunity. After all, many people have also attested that despite the short period of time learning the language in this course, students do get quite proficient afterwards. I'm crossing my fingers.

Ok, about the being alone thing again. It's not a secret that I really had a hard time in Cebu dealing with the fact that I was so far away from home. And if you think about it, I should be feeling the same way now, if not worse, right? Beijing is in a different country, the English and Chinese languages are so disparate, the people don't really look like me as much as the Cebuanos do. So even I surprised myself when I didn't feel depressed about leaving.

Not that I'm glad, of course I still feel a little sadness, but I'm also proud of the fact that maybe I have matured somehow, knowing that these things are just challenges that I can overcome, and feelings of homesickness will naturally come to pass. I have accepted that it's normal to cry sometimes but it shouldn't get in the way of living your days in an exciting new environment that you are yet to explore.

So here's to living in Beijing, speaking the han yu (Chinese language), and to chasing our dreams!