A Great Year

If 2008 came and went like a tornado, then the first week of 2009 just roared past through as well. After coming home from Taiwan, I had to work on Sunday (the PRC gave us Friday Jan 2 off but made us work on Sunday), and was essentially thrown into meeting after meeting, project after project. My team and I just pulled off a 500-person event, which was one of the largest I’ve worked on so far. Luckily, after giving presentations in Paris and standing in front of a classroom for 10 months straight, speaking in front of large audiences no longer scares me. In fact, I quite like it.

Although I’ve already seen a number of 2008 re-caps and hate to jump on the bandwagon, I feel I must post something. After all, 2008 was a monumental year in my life. A year ago, I was living in a tiny dorm room on a HIGH SCHOOL campus, and teaching little kiddies about earthworms and frogs (and older kids who were mind you, smarter than me, about economics). If I count the six months before then, I was still living in New York City. In Jan 2008, I wasn’t sure where my career would be, nor did I know which city/country I would live in next. I thought about moving to London, but also looked into Hong Kong, Singapore and San Francisco. It wasn’t until May when a friend talked to me about Beijing, a city I hadn’t even considered, and here I am today, living in the “Jing”.

In 2008, I traveled to 5 new countries (Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, Singapore), ate my heart out in Hong Kong, climbed the mountains of Huangshan, ate the super spicy food in Chengdu, lived in Hangzhou and rang in the New Year in Taiwan. I met amazing people like Scott Neeson, founder of the Cambodian Children’s Hospital, played with children who weren’t going to make it past the age of 5 at Steung Meanchey and saw Usain Bolt sprint down the track at the 2008 Olympics. I worried, I laughed, I cried (quite a number of times) about so many things. When I finally sat down and flipped thru the photos of 2008, I couldn’t help but smile. What a great year.