I want to feel words forming beneath my skin, hear words tumbling into the space, want to hear the sound of my voice tugging words into sentences into images into existence.

What have I been learning this year trudging to and fro from school to home and home to school? At a recent job interview, he asked me, ‘有用吗?’ –did anything I learned this year have any use? To which I replied, ‘有意思' purposefully evading his insinuating question to tell him and to affirm to myself –it had meaning.

Meaning—significance. How was it really significant other than being a strange, self-gratifying, exploratory experience: a foray into a covert world of dancers training to be dancers in China. At school, I stood in the back of the class and attempted to be inconspicuous, despite the fact that I was conspicuously the worst student in every class. My body told no lies; it lacked sufficient training and discipline. It was inflexible and simply older than every student in all my classes. The other students have learned to smile, to cajole the audience into adoring them. They have been honing their renditions of femininity for years and as I watched them with pangs of envy, I alternated between enjoyment and disillusionment. There were times I felt tears pricking my eyes when their movement and the music gelled into one cohesive, complete line; sometimes I felt like their plastic smiles and mascara enhanced lashes only accentuated the bored emptiness in their eyes. But I also have to remind myself they are young—eighteen or twenty. They have a long way to go—if they keep dancing. They might not; suddenly there are too many dance students and not enough dance jobs.

This year, I tried to learn to be Chinese. I tried to make my words sound native, attached ‘er’ and ‘ar’ to the ends of my sentences, accentuated my ‘ing’ and ‘shi’ to make them crisp, hard and assertive and felt defeated when all the cab drivers repeatedly asked me where I was from. Only once did a cab driver guess Taiwan or Hong Kong. I triumphantly assured him that my dad is from Taiwan and my mom is from Hong Kong, and neglected to mention that I am really from New York. Usually, they think I’m Korean.

It’s strange to be back in New York again. I am practically inhaling the streets into my bones, revisiting my favorite shops, eateries, and resuming my wandering through the streets only to discover a sudden explosion of pinkberry frozen yogurt shops, and a red mango shop in ostentatious competition stationed directly across the street. New York feels like home, feels like a worn but still glamorous sweater that fits the way it’s supposed to. It makes me feel like me. But there are odd moments when I feel like a complete stranger. The streets seem to shift beneath my feet when I can’t remember exactly where something is, when I have to let muscle memory take over. Things get a bit fuzzy around the edges. And I remember I’ve been gone.