How It All Began

It all started on a warm, sunny Los Angeles day the way these things always seem to begin: I was checking my email. It seemed so innocuous at first, one of those annoying emails from USC was in my inbox (the sort that you click on for the sole purpose of hitting the delete button) and i was about to delete it when something caught my eye. The subject was something like "exchange program applications" and I decided that an email from the school might actually be worth looking at for once. A series of somewhat interesting events then began to unfold (but not interesting enough that you would want me to include them here). To sum up the events my decision went as follows: I decided I wanted to go: 1)anywhere except Hong Kong, 2) South Korea, 3) Singapore, 4) Australia, 5) Singapore again, and then finally 6) Hong Kong. The basic reason behind this was that every time I decided where I wanted to go I would find out some new piece of information about the classes offered or the school itself that made me change my mind. In the end, I made my decision after hearing someone share about their experience as an exchange student here in Hong Kong and I realized that it was much different than my initial expectations of what I thought Hong Kong would be like.

Fast forward to 10AM January 15th. I woke up and was lying in bed when it suddenly hit me: that night I was going to travel to another continent and live there for the next four and a half months. No more In-n-Out, no more Chipotle, no more ubiquitous English everywhere I go. To put it succinctly, no more life as i have known it. That moment was when it finally hit me that I was about to embark on a journey where I would be away from family, friends, and my life would be turned upside down. The two biggest things that hit me were the realization that I was leaving my dog for 4 months, and that I wasn't going back to USC and my friends until August. I know that I can still chat with them online and talk to friends and family on Skype, but the knowledge that they would be living 9 months without me and having experiences that I would not be there to share with them was disturbing. The rest of the day was spent packing and finishing miscellaneous things I've been putting off and otherwise uneventful (certainly nothing worth your time to read about here). There was, however, one exception. I am not one to be emotional about things, preferring logical analysis to emotion, but I will admit that I came very close to crying when I was hugging my dog for what I knew would be the last time for many months. Many people seemed surprised and/or shocked when I tell them that I miss my dog more than my family when I'm at USC. On the surface this seems to be a prime example of misplaced priorities, but you have to remember that I speak to my family daily and can email them or chat online, things I am clearly unable to do with my dog.

Now that I am finished with that digression fast forward to 12:05AM at the San Fransisco International Airport: I board the 747 and prepare myself for the adventure that awaits me.