Time...

Back to Beijing now, via Shanghai..and finally able to catch up with everyone here, having only been in beijing for about 9 days in the last 3 months!

Beijing in the winter is often a city with snow, not that it snows often (only 2 or 3 times a year) but because the snow never really melts on the roadside...partly because it is so cold and partly it seems like the snow is full of chemicals from the pollution and in so inpure it just doesn't seem to melt in the sun!

Coming bck to Beijing is a shock though. I have been used to spending a few nights here or there getting by on few clothes and few meals; or i have been looked after well (at home in the UK or in Bangkok visiting friends) -but when you get 'home' to Beijing and remember that no-one likes cleaning, beijing is very dirty and dusty and then find out the cook isn't coming this month (not enough ppl around to make it worthwhile) it's a little shock.

Anyway it is nice to be back working with other people again instead of working out of Devrim's living-room in Shanghai all alone (and freezing due to his broken heater!) It's also nice to see 'old' friends return, not so nice to see 'old' friends leave (and maybe return?) but I got used to it a long time agao. A timely reminder that living abroad is full of people coming and going -at this age anyway.

At the conference in Shanghai before Chinese New Year we elected part of the new team who will run AIESEC here... and I certainly feel like AIESEC China is my AIESEC, no longer AIESEC UK. Maybe its because although I have only been here 18 months, AIESEC here is only 4 years old! Its sometimes emotional realising that you will be leaving soon, that new people will take your job. In AIESEC, this happens without fail every 12 months. What is great about it is not that you think about the past, but that you think about the future. I am always excited at these elections seeing new people take up opportunities and the challenge (since AIESEC is so challenging!) and seeing what the old people have achieved.

I have been talking to some of those newly elected people and some going onto new jobs (as well my former colleagues in AIESEC UK all settling into their new-ish jobs, sicne they also bummed around a bit!) and this leads to opportunities to reflect on why I came here, and why I stayed. Partly because China is so interesting and changing so fast...which is fascinating, but mostly because AIESEC here was changing so fast and I could play a key role in that. Growth in AIESEC has been astounding. in 2 years we will have doubled the number of Universities we work with and in 1 year we are more than doubling our core results... this was coming from the UK where growth was 10-20% a year at best.

But I am sure that leaving AIESEC in the summer is the right thing to do..unlike some others who are going to other countries or the international head office! Its time to move-on...but it will be tough. Since AIESEC offers so much responsibility and opportunities..things that the real world doesn't offer so easily, or with so little risk! Its time to start looking around... its also time to try harder to stay in touch with those i fleetingly saw in the UK. But then its time to work harder at my job to achieve as much as possible, whilst also finding time to have fun, to read, to... aaaah, time. Never enough -especially when you are young (still, but only just!) -and especially in a country or an organisation moving this fast!

I haven't managed to get to Harbin for the ice festival, climb a holy mountain in the snow or see the great wall in winter... so there are still things to do next winter -there are still regions of China I want to explore and there will always be 3 week-long holidays a year in China to try do them in! I guess its good not to do everything, to save some things and to slow down sometimes.. to try to savour the moment. to TRY anyway!