I would do it all over again.

So I am struggling with writing my graduation thesis because all the ideas are jumbled up in my head and I don't feel like I can piece them together properly or convincingly. And it doesn't help that there are three upcoming group presentations, where I am the de facto leader because I am the most senior member in the group. Which then makes me wonder why professors ask for group presentations AND a mid term paper. I'd frankly much rather do the latter than the former after comparing the time invested and the output. [Yes now I am older I get to be cynical thankyouverymuch.]

And with the burden of having to cobble together a 10,000 word essay in Chinese by the end of May on me, I find myself wondering if I the past 4 years has been all worth it. This came up in the Skype conversation with T yesterday and I found myself saying 'YES' I would do it again: arming myself against smog, dealing with the lowlifes who stole my scooter batteries, being felt up by strange old men on a crowded subway (to be fair it happened once only), getting food poisonings on an annual basis, dealing with school bureaucratic crap that does not value add to anything. But also rediscovering the beauty of my mother tongue, meeting my friends from all over Asia, toughening myself up because I am the defender of my own rights, seeing how everyday ordinary people work hard for a living, and discovering the Korean language, culture and people.

T told me not to rationalize my experience and just answer from the heart. And so I paused to think and ultimately still decided that yes, I would do this all over again. I had a beyond amazing experience in Korea and now a piece of me is permanently Korean but if I could do it all over again would I have had chosen Korea over China? No. I only enjoyed Korea so much because I learnt about the culture and language before I went there. If I was plucked from Singapore and thrown into Korea without speaking Korean/without understanding the collective Korean culture I would probably hate it from the beginning.

So China, for all that it is, gave me a pressure cooker environment to grow up and deal with adult stuff: managing my finances, buying a vehicle, sending myself to the hospital etc. And because everything here seems so cut throat and competitive (primarily because of the sheer size of the population), I was forced to grow out of my strawberry ways. Not that I was a greenhouse strawberry to begin with but hey, compared to the migrant workers I met who are my age and have been away from home since they were 16, I think it is only fair to call myself a strawberry.

Now I wouldn't say that China is for everyone, but it did wonders for me as I transitioned from my late teens to my early twenties. It was formative. And I will forever be thankful for that.

Me on my impromptu ski trip last December on an outdoor ski slope in rural Beijing.