In the home stretch...

This past Saturday, besides being St. Patrick's Day, marked the eight month anniversary of my arrival in Shanghai. Looking back, the time here has alternated between flying by and inching along at an unimaginably slow pace (although nothing before or since has come even close to the three agonizing weeks between my Tufts interview and receiving my acceptance email.) Sitting at work today, I flipped open my calendar and realized that I have a mere two weeks of work left!

I could work that first week in April, but Robert and his wife, Cortney, will be here, along with a surprise guest, Amy Snyder, an old friend from my early days at Wisconsin. Realizing how little time I have left in China, and that I have seen most of the sights to see in Shanghai, I booked a ticket on the overnight train to Beijing for this Thursday. I plan to spend this weekend making amends for my tourist faux pas of my first trip up with my mom when I missed seeing both the Summer Palace and the famous Pearl Market (which ironically is home to tons of great deals on most consumables, yet only has moderately good deals on the shiny things that come in oysters.)

It's an interesting feeling, coming to the end of my time here, and reminds me of my last few months in college... but in the same way that I never really did the "this is the last time I'll ever _____" when I was getting ready to leave Wisconsin, I'm not too hung up on any sentimental attachments here... to be honest, I'm really ready to do a little more fun travelling and then get back to the good old US of A.