为什么中国? (Why China ?)

As discussed in my previous post (you can read it here), I decided to change things up a bit and go to Shanghai, China for a long term stay abroad. The biggest question seems to be "why China?" which I will explain in greater detail below..

In the past, when someone asked me why I was going to China I responded with the partial truth. I told people that I wanted to go to China to learn Mandarin and experience different aspects of the Chinese culture with the ultimate goal of making myself a competitive candidate in the foreign relations sector and the university study abroad sector. I mentioned reading about people who received the jobs of their dreams due to spending some time in China or learning Mandarin Chinese. These answers seemed to satisfy the majority of my listeners (I still had some skeptics), but as I mentioned above, this was only part of the story/reason why I wanted to go. To be frank, I don't know why I decided on going to China...

 Aside from the Summer Olympics of 2008 or some other random new story, I must admit that China barely crossed my mind. For the past few years, dreams of London and other European cities were my biggest concerns and I had little interest in Asia. I even thought about bypassing the world's largest continent in exchange for living and working down under (I mean way, way under) in New Zealand.

I don't know why or how it happened, but by the end of last year, I started having visions and dreams of Asia, specifically China. I had random visions of traveling the country and learning how to read and write those interesting characters. Aside from the visions, things started popping into my life concerning living in China that were not by my own doing. I know it sounds strange and even bizarre to most, but something in my soul was attracting me to China. I never question my female intuition so I started paying attention to what was happening and I decided to act upon it.

So in short, I have no definitive answer on why I decided on going to China. I could say for a travel adventure or better yet, as a resume booster but honestly I don't know. I guess this is one of life's mysteries that will reveal itself in time so I no longer choose to stress about it. Instead, I'm going to listen to my gut and thank the man upstairs for granting me this opportunity.

Thanks again for tuning in!

-Shelly