Beijing is home

Work was good this weekend. Long days and lots of children, but I do enjoy it. We had our Christmas party for the children Sunday night. It was fun. Slightly boring but I managed to keep myself entertained. Yesterday was a rather slow day at work. I had my 15 year old VIP who almost fell asleep, but managed to keep his eyes open. He actually laid his head down on the desk at one point and continued reading. I need to learn how to be more forceful with my discipline, I just don't want to scare him. Hopefully he will be better today.

Last night was a good night. I met up with ISB people for drinks after work. Katy Wang, Sally Wang, Ellen Siu, Elana Siu, Terrance Ho, Annastiina, and Peter Luk we all there. Plus some significant others, whose company was also enjoyed. But it was nice to catch up again. Terrance, Elana her s.o. Blair, and Annastiina and I went to 1001 Nights afterward. These are the moments that make me truly appreciate being here in Beijing. I love being able to see people that we went to school with and hearing about their lives now. I feel like each person I went to school with is like seeing family again after years. It doesn't matter what year we graduated or what group of people we hung out with we always have fun, and we always have plenty to talk about. So many different stories are thrown about the table and we are all so similar but so different in many ways. I love to be able to say that I can sit at a table and be the only American, and that every person there is from a different country. But, we all have our high school in common. It's not like schools in the states where we still see each other every day and know what we ate for dinner last night. We all have so many different exotic exciting stories to tell, places we've been, people we've seen, jokes we can make to entertain ourselves. The humor is usually endless, which was definitely the case last night. A good "that's what she said" joke never gets old. And it's a shared joke world wide. I am excited to go back and finish my masters, but like I told everyone last night, I think this is where I want to be when I am done.

Here's to many more nights shared with old friends and good laughs. They seem to be endless as people come in and out of my life, and return to reminisce about teachers and events we all heard about but were entertaining rumors. This is the chance we have to know each other as adults, as our own guide in this exciting enormous world. But at every point of the world, I have someone that I can say is a friend and much like family. It's hard to keep up with everyone that I know, but I do think about my ISB days always, and wouldn't change a second of it for any other life. I'm blessed to be able to call each of you my friend, whether we hung out often, or barely exchanged words, we always have our ISB family to come back to.

Sorry for the cheesy rant, but I am kind of a softy at times. Some of you may be saying BARF, but I'm proud to call you my friend whether you agree with what I say or not.