I had the most bittersweet moment yesterday morning: during that 15 seconds when you first are waking up but you haven’t really stopped dreaming, and you don’t remember where you are, just briefly, this vision of my room at home appeared as if it was what I was going to see when I opened my eyes. It was such a sweet and vivid memory that even when it was shattered by the reality of my stuffy, spartan Chinese hotel room, I still felt like I’d been at home, if but briefly.

We’re wrapping things up in China tomorrow, and will begin the trip home (in real life) in the afternoon. Cross the border to Hong Kong, spend the night there, then fly back to Seattle via Tokyo the next day, arriving around the same time as departure, through the magic of the International Date Line. By the time I get to SeaTac on Friday morning, I will have spent 18 nights away, stayed in 10 different hotels (and spent the night on several airplanes). To say I’m ready to be home would be an understatement of epic proportions.

The trip was not without pleasure or satisfaction: I made some new friends and got some good exercise in Hong Kong, got some fancy shirts tailor-made for cheap, accomplished plenty on the work front, learned a ton of new Chinese vocabulary and ate lots of good food. But all that said, I’m not sad about leaving at all. Is it Friday morning yet?