One of One

While eating dinner tonight, my gaze drifted across a sea of faces I no longer recognise. I suppose that’s inevitable when you stay at the school long enough. Students arrive and leave with reliable regularity, like tides.

But tonight felt different.

For the first time, I realised I was the only foreigner here. The lone European face among a room full of Chinese students. Friends, really — but unfamiliar ones.

It was a strange feeling. Subtly lonely. Mildly isolating.

I know I’m not alone. I have myself, my work, my ever-evolving dreams. Still, for a brief moment, I felt singular. One of one. Just another face, different but not separate, surrounded by people who have all come here for their own reasons, chasing their own quiet ambitions.

The year is drawing to a close, and when I look back, it’s hard to deny how much ground it covered. A year marked by constant change. By challenges that tested me more than once. By a handful of small wins that mattered far more than they appeared, giving me just enough belief to keep turning up. To keep digging. To stay.

Today left me tired. I’ve started a new form, and the basics alone set my legs on fire. Xing Yi Quan is direct, unapologetic — built for straight lines and forward pressure. There’s no softness to hide behind.

It’s early days. Very early. But I can already sense that, in time, this will become a form I grow close to — once we learn how to speak to each other.

So the story continues as another year winds down.

Nothing has really changed.
And yet, everything feels quietly different.