Flash forward 2012!
Where to start? A couple big things have happened in these past couple of months, both exciting and nerve-wracking.
In the time that’s elapsed since my trip to Iceland, I’ve also managed to squeeze in a two-week trip to Beijing. Needless to say, things have changed a lot since my last visit in 2005, although the suburbs still remained the same. Still though, it’s funny to think that I spent the first six years of my life there as the culture shock is simply immense! (You would think that speaking Mandarin helps, but in some ways, I think it acts as more of a hindrance as people’s expectations of you as Chinese are very different than they would be if you were simply 老外, or a foreigner. A strange paradox, ich weiss. I’ve learned to recognize the, ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you dumb?‘ inquisitive look and subsequently also learned to reply sans delay, “I’ve been studying abroad for a very very long time.”) Oh, I also got food poisoning and was hooked up to the IV twelve hours before my flight out of China, but that’s a story for another time.
I’ve also left my school job at the end of last semester. Running every day between Sorengo (school), Paradiso (home) and Lugano (internship) proved just too much on my short little legs, and everything else was suffering due to it. It was a great learning experience both from a management and cultural perspective, however, and it gave me a clearer idea of where I place in terms of working style, personal style, etc.
Last semester I went to my first job fair in Zürich, which was abso-fucking-lutely terrifying! Now in retrospect, it was a pretty funny experience, but at the time I felt so much like a fish out of water. To start of, I am pretty sure I was the only one there who didn’t speak proficient German, and boy, is that language really important in Switzerland! And I don’t remember how many companies I went up to, asking, “I have never heard of your company. Could you please tell me a bit more about what you do?” before learning that they were one of the top leaders in their respective industries. (I will never live BCG down.) Yeah, that was a humbling day. I guess it’s moments like these where you just have to smile and be grateful for the opportunity, eh? 
And–fast forward to the present: these upcoming couple of months are going to be a real transitional phase for me in many ways, with the big upcoming thing being graduation. I’ve also decided that I’m going to try a different blogging strategy, composing many short topical blogs instead of trying to sum up everything at once (like this post…which sadly, is now leaving me exhausted), in hopes that I will be better able to manage this ongoing blog-project.
And to end things with a bang: I’m going to Munich this weekend!
I have some previous experience with immersion language learning from my year as a high school exchange student, but this time around, learning the local language is proving more difficult. In Norway, everyone could speak English, so in a way you were eased into the bath. Here, it’s more like cannonballing your way in. To survive, I rely consistently on a mixture of French and “Swissified” Norwegian and hope for the best.
