(Originally written November 20, 2012.)
When I first went to study Chinese in Beijing in the summer of 2005, I was a fairly avid triathlete. This posed some serious issues that, at the time, I didn’t really think were going to be issues — actually, that statement alone pretty much summarizes every experience I had that summer, from the miserable homestay experience that abruptly ended, to the realization that learning Chinese was going to be a hell of lot tougher than I imagined.