Hong Kong

• My second home. I lived here for six months on exchange at HKU, studying international business, in a dorm on Pok Fu Lam Road that looked out over the ocean. The feeling wasn't that I was visiting — it was that I was supposed to be there.
• First impression: I felt lost in the city, but somehow comfortable at the same time. Something about the density, the pace, the way everything worked without explaining itself to you. I didn't know where I was going, and it didn't bother me.
• Most days had a shape to them. Bus out of Pok Fu Lam, off at HKU station, down into Central for a coffee at whichever shop I felt like that morning, then a long walk along Victoria Harbour. Ten thousand steps before I'd really started the day. The city rewarded walking.
• My spot was H. Coffee Shop in Wan Chai — small, cozy, tucked into a quieter block. The kind of place you find once and then return to because it feels like yours.
• I spent most of my time with the Lancaster University crowd at HKU. Exchange friendships are a specific kind — fast, deep, unrepeatable. You meet, you live in the same orbit for a few months, you make memories at a compressed pace, and then everyone scatters. That's its own thing entirely.
• The changes weren't dramatic. They came in small ways — how I moved through unfamiliar places, how I thought about independence, how I held time. Six months of those small shifts added up to a different person walking back out than the one who flew in.
• My last meal was at one of my favorite Shenzhen restaurants with my best friend from the semester. Bittersweet is the only word for it. A chapter closing, a real friendship being left at an ocean's distance, and a quiet hope that our paths cross again somewhere in this life.
• I'll be back. Next time as a longer trip through China — with Hong Kong as the first stop, the way it always should be.

Running almost the full length of Hong Kong Island in a single day — fifteen miles through neighborhoods I thought I knew, and a few I didn't.