Sweet Home Asia?

I've just realized that between the time I spent in Hong Kong, Taiwan and several other countries around here, I've been in Asia for over a year altogether, overtaking North America for second place in continents where I spent the longest (now that is a silly ranking..), even if in terms of countries, United States are still in second place (Taiwan will take over soon enough though).

One year sounds like a pretty long time already, and I'm not even sure where it came from. I don't consider myself a big Asia-phile. Don't have a particular interest for the Far Eastern cultures. Don't care about Buddhism, Confucianism and don't plan on spending several years searching for my soul in a monastery. While I've tried several types of martial arts before, i've not developed any particular passion for them, which would make me want to seek wisdom from the real masters (everyone knows that only an Asian guy can be a real kung-fu or karate master!). While I can appreciate the beauty of Taiwanese women, there is significant evidence that I didn't come here for the girls.

So really, I just kind of lucked into this. When deciding about the place of my semester abroad exchange 3 years ago, I thought that Europe is too close and safe, America sounded boring and Hong Kong was the only other option. I did kind of develop a passion for the Chinese language, although that has in recent months been shaken by a little frustration about the language. Strangely, in the first weeks and months of my studies, I thought it was really fun and easy to learn and speak. Now it seems that the more I learn, the more there is still to learn.

With all that said.. While I'm looking forward to my summer in Europe, I'm pretty sure that after 2 months there, I will be excited and ready for another year in this crazy island.