It's so odd to think, just two years ago, I was already in China preparing for the biggest event of the summer, the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I was prepping with Olympic tennis events, spying on the Williams sisters during their practice bout, sneaking into one of Rafael Nadal's press conferences, no? and plotting which bar was the best to watch the Opening Ceremony. Needless to say, I felt on top of the world and I had the credentials to prove it.
This return visit will be something quite different. I may still be treated like a celebrity, on the basis that I am a foreigner, and an obvious one at that. If you ask, I will regretfully tell you, ni hao and zaijian are about the only pinyin words that stick to my mandarin mind. Forgotten vocab, oh right, that's what happened in those two years. Yet, I'm still as excited as I was before I landed in the Middle Kingdom for my first round. I'll be employed and I suppose as a recent grad that is something to celebrate even if it isn't as magnificent on a global scale as Olympic medals.
(I get to brag at least once, right?)
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