All about who?

It's difficult for someone like me to answer such a broad question as "Think of something you absolutely love." I always have trouble unequivocally declaring my love for just about anything: There are always good sides and bad sides to any thing or concept. It's the reason I will never get a tattoo. There is nothing in this world that I love so much that I would get it permanently inked into my body... I'm always changing my mind about things and I'd be a sure candidate for tattoo regret. Even the few things I am pretty serious about liking are things that aren't easily defined and would generally make terrible blog topics. For instance, I strongly believe in trimming unnecessary complexity out of any system. This demonstrates itself in a few ways (I refuse to own a car with an automatic transmission or power windows, for instance), none of which lend themselves to any sort of reading that anybody but myself would enjoy. Who wants to hear about the inefficiency of the torque converter when most people would just rather be able to talk on the phone while they drive? It's the kind of thing you only mention to someone when asked.

Even so, about this time last year something crept into my life that has changed almost everything about that life since I first started paying any attention to it. I can't promise it will be the topic of my blog in the end (in fact, it almost certainly will not), but it is definitely a large part of my life nonetheless.  

It started sometime in Spring semester of 2008. I was putting together my schedule for the next Fall, happily avoiding Algebra and Public Speaking and all of those classes that I had been avoiding for the past three years but knew would inevitably become my bane during my last semester (which, incidentally, is what they are now doing). Instead of getting one of those requirements out of the way, my eye was struck by one of the options in the "new classes" section of the catalog. For the first time ever, UPG was offering Chinese. Given my easily-obtained fluency in French, I figured Chinese would be a great grade booster and a path to 5 credits of easy As for me. So, I chose to enroll in the class more or less entirely on a whim.  

The beginning of the Fall semester rolled around after a dull summer which included (in no particular order) a pretty serious breakup, an introduction to generalized anxiety disorder, and a lot of work.  

Needless to say, the beginning of the school year and the return of all my college friends to Greensburg, my reluctantly-accepted home year-round was very, very welcome when it came.  

The beginning of Chinese class itself was not especially thrilling, but as I grew more familiar with the basics of the language, the learning process was captivating and enjoyable. Despite the relatively early hour of the class, I found myself driven to show up to it.  Sometime during the next semester, a lady came and gave us a presentation on some study abroad program. The idea of traveling interested me a lot, but it was difficult for me to find the opportunity to do so because of my living situation. Still, her presentation got me into the idea of figuring out how to actually go about doing so. I got really excited about the program she was offering (which just proves that she was a good salesperson), but upon further research I discovered that that particular program was absurdly expensive. Undaunted, I looked into other options and eventually settled on the Pitt in China program through our fair university.What I then found out almost killed my ambitions immediately. Evidently, the application deadline was over a month ago. Still, though I considered it a long shot, I called the study abroad office to see if I could squeeze myself in.  As it turns out, earlier the exact same day that I called, someone had dropped from the program. If I believed in fate, fortune, or anything like that, this would have confirmed my belief.  After a lot of e-mails and paperwork, I finally got to travel. I'm going to truncate things a bit here because I'm really running out of steam on the whole thing. Suffice to say that the two months during which I lived in Wuhan were, despite a violent and confusing breakup (with the same girl as the summer before [fool me once...]) and constant diarrhea, two of the best months of my life. It was an absolutely unparalleled experience that really solidified a lot of plans that were prior to that ephemeral dreams in my head. The bustle of progress surrounding me gave me the undeniable sense that I had to return to that place. While I was there, I began to research exactly how I could do that, and the results of that research govern my plans for the future to this day.  Despite all of this, though the subject may creep into other things about which I blog, China will almost definitely not be the topic of my blog for this class. I don't know what I'd write about it and I still don't have enough authority on it to really write something useful about it.