I’m ready for Jishou. I’m ready for the troublemaker in my class. I’m ready for navigating around pushy street vendors who want me to buy socks. I’m ready for heat and humidity. I’m ready for never feeling clean. I’m ready for bugs – even bugs I don’t want to believe exist. I’m ready for mosquitoes, squat toilets, foreign foods, and strange, personal conversations with old people. I’m ready to lose myself in service.

While I can’t expect or anticipate what’s going to happen to me in China, I can guess about how I will feel. This will be the first prolonged experience in my life where I will be dedicating myself to others and watching the “me” slip farther and farther from view. Many things will be more obviously out of my control, with basic communication and personal routines radically altered. I expect to feel overwhelmed, excited, alone, amazed, terrified, and really really happy – maybe not all at once – but definitely at some point throughout this trip.

Hopefully eight weeks from now I will be a better person. I hope to know what it feels like to invest oneself completely in helping others. I hope that I can be confident that life doesn’t have to be about consumption, production, and the pursuit of pleasure. I hope that I will be changed in ways I can’t anticipate. I hope to fall in love with China.

Filled with flash-forwards, tiger blood, and with delusional, unsupported confidence,

-Nick