I'm trying to forget that I'm addicted to you...

...but I want it and I need it, I'm addicted to you.

New place, new times, new blog. I tried not to do it, really I did. I intentionally didn't make any promises to anyone to blog or send lengthy e-mail updates or even skype for hours. I didn't want to be chained to my laptop, documenting my experiences and communicating with the outside world instead of fully experiencing the here and now. But just 3 days after I got to Hong Kong, I was itching to write, and specifically to blog, again. Maybe it's conditioned, a behavior whose stimulus is being in a foreign country other than India. Maybe it's practical, a way to communicate with all my friends and family at once. Or maybe it's just who I am, a natural craving that shows through when you scrape away all the exams to study for and phone calls to return and meetings to attend. In any case, here I am again, re-entering the blogosphere. I can already feel my nerves being steadied.

But it's not just a writing addiction that I'm satisfying at the moment. I'm also satisfying a ten-year addiction to CTY and a relatively newer addiction to traveling. Greetings from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where I will be living and working for the next month. How did I get here? In brief, the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) is a multi-site residential summer camp for gifted middle and high school students that's run by Johns Hopkins University. If you've ever been a part of CTY though, you know it's more like a little utopian community/cult that exists for 3 weeks every summer and leaves you craving it the other 49 weeks of the year. It's hard to describe the amount of love, curiosity, energy, intelligence, creativity, and compassion that fill the environment at CTY. I first attended as a student in 2001, and, idealistic as ever, I knew from that summer that I wanted to work at CTY like my cool RAs and TAs. My parents probably rolled their eyes at the time, but lo and behold, in 2009, the very first summer that I could possibly apply, I was a Teaching Assistant (TA) at the Chestertown, MD site. The following year I came up with a grand plan to work at the Hong Kong site directly after living out yet another idealistic dream of studying abroad in Spain, but my parents thought that sounded like too much international travel for my first dose, so instead I worked at the Lancaster, PA site, which was special for me because it was a site I had loved as a student. But I'm stubborn and have a great memory when it comes to my grand plans (not so much for the brachial plexus or the coagulation cascade, unfortunately)- so I had my sights set on Hong Kong for 2011, my last real summer break ever. I figured- I don't know when I'll have a chunk of time off to travel abroad again; I probably won't be able to work at a CTY camp ever again; and I definitely don't foresee many opportunities to travel with someone else footing the bill for flights and accommodations. So it was a perfect storm of idealism, adventurousness, cheapness, and carpe diem that brought me here to CTY Hong Kong.

I've been here for a couple days and already have so much to squeal and marvel and ramble about, but in an effort to keep this blog a bit more reader-friendly and also to not spend my every waking minute writing, I'll stop here. For now, with a new blog established, a black lanyard around my neck, and Clear Water Bay outside my window, everything feels right in the world.