From the future I’m apologizing for what I’m about to say in the past, below: I’m sitting in a Taiwanese milk tea shop in Arlington. From this bench seat I can see the university I attended, where by way of an advertisement posted in a stairwell I happened to be walking in, I found out I could study Chinese and complete two years of mandatory foreign language coursework in one year of time. This is the path through which I became interested in Asia. This could’ve been a trivial detail in my life but it’s not at all. It’s hard for me to even fathom what my life would be like now had that not happened. My entire attitude and life shifted from a state of passive acceptance to actively taking risks and feeling excited and engaged in my own…
