The universe decided for me I maintained a solid study regimen for 4 months, day in day out I would learn new characters and revise old one's. Not bad for a kid who was the class joker, the boy who rarely studied for tests, the boy that was sent out of class for being disruptive. Eventually however I became burnt out, I abruptly stopped learning and couldn't make myself pick it up for about a month. For one whole month I didn't look at a single Chinese character. After a while I did come back to it, and to my horror I realized that I had forgotten most of the characters that I learned. Relearning them wasn't as hard as the first time around but it was shocking to me none the less at how fast you could lose something you've work so hard on for so long. I started from the beginning again, this time learning to pace myself to prevent another burnout, after all you shouldn't start running when you have to travel a 1000 kilometers on foot. I learned and learned, sometimes consistently, sometimes not so much. The important thing was that I was coming back to the study, it was probably the most disciplined en-devour that I had ever undertaken in my life up until that point. I was proud of myself. 2 years passed and by this time I had already told my friends and family. The reactions were predictable, nobody cheered me on or tried to motivate me. I remember faces of disbelief and confusion. From the moment you are born people are behind you, complementing every achievement and motivating you to chase your dreams. At a certain age however your achievements and dreams are no longer accepted with a happy smile, welcome to the dysfunctional mature mind I digress. After this time had passed I was beginning to feel the routine of daily life, my studies weren't interesting me and the future which I was walking toward seemed lifeless and grim. I always wanted to study abroad and I needed to go to China if I ever want to speak the language... Bingo. My two greatest desires at that point were perfectly combine able. I told my parents what I was planning, they resisted, but I trusted my intuition enough not to let them dissuade me. I look outside the window of the airplane and see a large city spread across the land, this is Beijing the Capital of China. Suddenly I felt a feeling of disbelief rush through my body, like I was sent there by someone else other than me. As the plane came closer to the ground, I was suddenly feeling the gravity of the decision i had made What the hell am I doing?