The first week back home was tough for a lot of reasons – the biggest one being jet lag. A 12-hour time difference is not an easy adjustment to make. My first couple of days I thought I was doing ok and I was just a little out of it. However, mid-week I CRASHED. I had one night where I couldn’t sleep and finally got up for the day at 4 am. I had multiple days of falling asleep on the couch at 7 PM, which certainly didn’t help with the adjustment process. It took about a week, but I finally got back to normal.
A very happy reunion with my puppy, Eliza
Adjusting was hard for other reasons. As I’ve mentioned, my Project Manager left IBM right before I left for China. So when I came back, I was taking on new responsibilities as opposed to just transitioning back into the job I was familiar with. I’m glad that I had such great co-workers to cover for me and help me catch up when I came back!
I also had to adjust to getting back into a daily routine and doing things like cooking and cleaning for myself. I miss being able to walk down the street to grab a bowl of spicy noodles for less than $2!
One of the things I miss most about China
Of course, everyone wants to hear all about my time in China. I’ve realized it’s not easy to talk about in a brief hallway exchange. I had so many different experiences during my CSC assignment and hard to figure out how to share my thoughts with people. I usually just say “it was a great experience!”, but that isn’t doing my trip justice. Maybe I should point them to my blog posts so they can get a better understanding of everything I did 🙂 I’m also planning on doing a presentation to a lot of my co-workers so I can give a more in-depth explanation of my time.
I miss my team members, but I’m hopeful that I will be able to see them again at some point. We also still have our WeChat group going, so it’s great that we can keep in touch that way.
After my time in Chengdu, my fiancé met me in Beijing where we spent a couple of days before heading to Seoul, South Korea. In my next post, I will share some of the experiences we had!
