"I think I'm strong enough now," she said, hesitatingly.
"Maybe not enough time has passed, you're still wounded, in pain. Reconsider, you can wait another month, another year," whispered a voice in her head.

Maybe it was right. What if she tried to take a step foreward and stumbled? Could she lift herself up again so soon?

The invisible weight on her shoulders became heavier, the world began to twist and turn around her, making her dizzy...

No. Not again. Never again.

She forced herself to stand a little straighter. Lifted her head, pushed her shoulders back. "I know sometimes things won't go my way; maybe I will stumble, maybe I will fall. But now I know how to pick myself up, I don't need anyone to help me with that anymore. I am ready."

Brave girl, I see.

Wow, Dana! What a nice thing for you to say about SAJ. We are always thrilled to see happy customers! That's what we are all about--spreading joy to the WdC community! Thanks for you kind comments!

Pat

Nora has a way of magically captivating my attention.... and making me stay up WAY past my bedtime!

I decided to visit your blog after reading the review you did on mine.

Sometimes, no matter how close we are to some people, we do outgrow them. There are a few people in my life that I was friends with in school that I would have swore we would have been friends forever, but that wasn't the case. We had our time together and I wouldn't change that for the world, but it was time to move on. We became different people with different lives and different views on the world. There are times that I miss these people and look back on our time together fondly, but that is the past and I have learned to live for now, not for then. I wish you luck on your trip 'home'. I think it's important to revisit where we came from so we can see our future more clearly.

Vikki

HA!

I know exactly how you feel. I'm living in Guangzhou right now and I have the advantage of being surrounded by Chinese every day but it is still an absolute pain at times. What sickens me the most is the fact that I've been here for a year and a half and still speak only slightly better Chinese than I did in school. I know that if I was living in a country with a PHONETIC alphabet and could read each bit of the signs and advertisements around me my language skills would have increased by leaps and bounds. Instead I can recognize the characters for "bank" but still have to look it up if I want to ask where one is because I forgot the pronunciation, or was only able to write the characters of my address when opening a bank account because I haven't studied half of them. And I was foolish enough to move from Nanjing just when my Mandarin was starting to get pretty decent, so now need to learn Cantonese. Sheesh. Weishenma zhongguohua zheme nan a~!

I belatedly wish you luck on your exam!

From an old woman to a young one..."Good for you."