Neela in Hong Kong

Homeward bound

Neela takes in the night life

It’s official. The last rent cheque is in, I’ve printed off my e-tickets and my date is booked to go down and tell the immigration office: I’m leaving Hong Kong.

The last month here has generally consisted of two things: squeezing in the last tourist sights on our list and organising all of the seemingly endless documents that are required for both leaving our schools and leaving the country. Yet at the same time, it has actually felt surprisingly calm and surreal. Maybe I’ve finally adapted to the fast-paced and chaotic Hong Kong lifestyle, or perhaps I’d just braced myself for so much madness that it was an inevitable anticlimax.

My lesson plans are filed away, what felt like a million and one things to check off my list are finally (mostly) scrubbed out, and all that’s really left to do is take a good, long look around and feel confused about where on earth the time went. But rather like when you leave your house in a hurry, or you’re about to get on a plane for your holidays, I can’t help but wonder; “What have I forgotten?”.

Indeed I’m a lot more confused about the whole process than I’d thought, and hoped, to be. That “ahhh” feeling of completeness and clarity is lacking, and it’s a tad distressing. I guess I thought I’d be feeling more… ready, than this.

Perhaps I can blame it on the weather. The Hong Kong climate is always extreme and somewhat unpredictable, but recently it has been swinging between sweltering heat and tropical rainstorms. The latter of which results in a colourful but vicious umbrella battle in the streets (in a ‘survival of the fittest” style all-out war), and makes sleeping particularly difficult at home, as it clonks on your air conditioning unit all night long.

Leaving Hong Kong will be difficult

There are some things about Hong Kong I may never get used to. But really I am distressingly aware that in preparing to return home, my resolve about leaving is waning. There suddenly seem to be a million reasons to stay and, in honesty, a huge part of me is craving the thought of continuing on in Hong Kong.

When you get to thinking of all the things you’re going to miss about a place, you can begin to wonder what on earth you’re doing in leaving. Hong Kong is pretty blooming fantastic. Aside from the brilliant friends I’ve made, I’ll miss the food, the MTR, the amazing architecture, the way you can pay for anything with your Octopus card, the markets, the general cheapness of everything, the fact that ladies drink for free on Wednesdays; the list truly is endless.

But there are also several things about home I’ve equally missed- seeing grass, seeing the sky, being cold outside and hot inside, using cutlery rather than chopsticks for every single meal, cheese, breathing in clean air, not being dripped on by air conditioners whilst walking down the street… that list is pretty exhaustive too.

What’s particularly upsetting, however, is leaving school. I knew this would happen. I got too attached. I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but somewhere in between my inner mantra of “it’s only for one year, it’s only for one year” and playing “fruitbowl”, those tiny tots have gotten to me. The vice-principal and I decided it best not to tell them I’m leaving until the very end, as apparently there would be too many tears and tantrums to continue with any kind of lesson. I think she was referring to the children. I was kind of referring to myself.

Hong Kong school life has been great

Of course, aside from all the trips, sights and adventures we’ve been experiencing here, the main focus and time spent of the year has indeed been school. Though I mightn’t miss getting to work for half 7 every morning, the children here are incredibly adorable and being the in-school celebrity has been heaps of fun- I’ll definitely miss the drawings of “me and Miss Jane” and the little gifts that get squashed into my hand at the end of class, or magically appear on my desk (ok granted, sometimes its chocolates, sometimes its dehydrated sea snails, but the thought is there and it’s touching all the same!). But the bell is, literally, ringing. End of school, time to go home.

This has, without a doubt, been the biggest adventure of my life. In many ways I’ve gained from it exactly what I wanted to achieve. This has included discovering a lot more about myself than I thought there was to know, and also learning a few general lessons of life. Firstly, I’ve leant that the world really is incredibly small. With e-mails, phonecards and social networks like “Facebook” doing the rounds, it really is so simple to keep in touch with people, no matter where they are. And since I’m now someone with a whole host of international friends in my address book, that’s reassuring to know.

Secondly, I’ve seen for myself that people, wherever they’re from and whatever they do, really are just people. On the surface, the cultural divide makes us appear alien to one another. But once you get to know individuals, after taking away the little exterior things such as appearance, dress, food and general social habits, you get to see that everyone is pretty much exactly the same! The stereotypes of a culture, such as the Chinese being “reserved” or “cold”, really begin to break down when you actually live in it. I wonder if my Chinese friends might have a different perspective of the typical western “gweilo”, too.

Oh, and third? Well, third is something that occurs to me as a comforting thought as I pack my bags and say the final goodbyes, and something that I had to travel six thousand miles across the world to truly discover for myself. It turns out that it’s true what they say: there’s no place like home.

Neela