Like an old friend some things never change.

3 years and 3 months. It has been three years and 3 months since I last posted anything to this blog. A return year to China has prompted me to dust off the old passwords, look for the defibrillator paddles and see if electricity can prod anything of substance out of documenting a year in Hong Kong. Three years wiser, a little tanner and a post-graduate degree to boot, I return to China for a final year of education ..... yet another post-graduate degree, or will life's experiences in Asia educate me more than any professor will ever do?

Goals for the year:

(1) Return in July with a job that I feel strongly about

(2) Brush up on my Chinese language skills (translation: relearn)

(3) Be open to any and all experiences that may cross my path and seek out those experiences that will enrich my life.

(4) Be brave.

There is a certain amount of trepidation swirling around in my brain, but I hope that will be quickly replaced with confidence and a renewed sense of adventure when I set foot back on the Asian continent.

For the next 12 months I will be more or less studying human rights law from all possible angles: national interpretations, international understanding of the phrase, impact on refugees, historical context ..... the list goes on. What will I do with all of this knowledge? I'm open to ideas if you want to leave any. All I can hope for is that all I've learned in my short life can be used for the betterment of the world and that the world might be a little bit of a better place when I leave it as compared to when I entered it.

As I sit here in the Vancouver airport awaiting my lengthy cross of the Pacific, I find myself already feeling as if I am in China. I am certainly already the minority and English is not the language of choice. I almost feel at home; ironic is that feeling where "at home" is somewhere between fitting in and being totally out of place, that awkward position where the heart feels at peace but others question how you could be happy somewhere so "foreign". Haha, I guess that just reinforces how much I like China and Chinese people. I think I'm headed to the right place.

I had to get a new passport for this journey b/c my old one expires next July and the HK immigration department did not want to issue me a 12 month visa on a passport that was not going to be valid for 12 months. The pristine new passport got a stamp from Canada today and it is no longer empty. While it does not have the 25 pages of Chinese immigration stamps pressed every-which direction one on top of the other from previous trips to the continent, I'm confident that many exciting journeys will be documented within the pages of the new passport.

Welcome back blog......let the new adventures unfold forthwith.