Balance is Key

(Well after 15 minutes of struggling to figure the button to start a new blog post I've come to the conclusion that a.) I fail at blogging and b.) my Chinese skills are still subpar after spending 5 months in Asia.)

After a week full of frustrations, stress, and complete and utter boredom, I've come to the conclusion that I'm deathly homesick/friendsick, in desperate need of some sort of stability to balance my life.

Home, what do I miss most? The simple things. Walking into a grocery store and picking up exactly what I want exactly where it always has been. Driving, it's not the laziness, though the mountain side hike to class does get a bit exhausting. No, it's really the freedom and control of time and place that I love. In my car I can go anywhere, anytime. And just being able to have a "home" where I have all my stuff, where my things are not temporary. Where I feel like I have a right to be, not stuck in the middle where I'm the mistaken illiterate local.

And friends, I have 44 during this year and a half, in theory. In practice, I have myself. In these months abroad I've learned so much about being independent, and being able to do things by myself, for myself. But I've also learned there's only so much I want to do alone. And there's only so much selfishness I can take before I realize that making other people in my life happy are just as important as doing things for myself. They will never be mutually exclusive. I miss the friends at home who I am perfectly happy spending endless hours with doing and talking about absolutely nothing. There's something special about people choosing to be in your life.

Hong Kong is terrible/great/different/shocking/amazing/polluted/crowded/familiar. How can I sum this place up to say I love it or I hate it? There is no one answer, and my opinion of HK changes with the hour. Because one hour I'm out on the balcony of the IFC 2 tower where Batman was filmed, overlooking the bright lights on the harbor, chilling with my CUHK friends. And after an hour cab ride, I'm back, at I-House, debating whether or not to feed the A/C 1HKD for an hour of coldness or suffer through the heat and humidity. Or when I go get Indian at the Chungking Mansion where I'm taken through a backalley, passed off to 3 different guys leading me to my dinner, which was...delicious. To the 2.5 HKD buns at Tai Po, to the bubble tea and egg tarts galore, to the mediocre canteen meals. So let's just say HK and I have a love hate relationship, much like the rest of the relationships in my life.

And I know I complain now, but one day soon I'm going to miss the excitement of having a life that changes any given hour because here you can be wherever you want to be as whoever you want to be. It's just being a random person in this random place for so long, I have a good grasp of who I do want to be. And I guess I'm just ready to be that person, but it's harder to do a million miles away from home.