Fifty days until I depart MCI, Beijing-bound.
The plane ticket is purchased and the Lonely Planet guide still untouched. The immunizations are vaguely dreaded. The suitcase has had a trial run for a month in Texas, and it will easily hold my life for a semester.
My last semester was so busy that I had nearly forgotten my dreams of climbing Huashan. I still need hiking shoes and wicking socks for that and for the two-week Silk Road trek I'll be taking with my classmates.
I still don't know Chinese. Wǒ bù huì shuō hàn yǔ. 我不会说汉语. That's why I'm going, and I keep telling myself that my minimal familiarity with the language is the whole reason I'm going abroad. I won't have high expectations. I won't have habits to break.
I will, instead, have a language barrier to plow face-first into.
I think the fresh slate (and the sheer amount of work I will be facing) excites me more than the food and the scenery and the city. I can't imagine those wonderful things. I have such a small frame of reference.
But class? That I understand. That I can look forward to.
