Two nights ago Karen and Baron (the gruesome twosome) came over for another "soft foods" delicacy: curry creamed spinach and minced shiitake mushrooms over polenta. Baron provided the mushrooms as they were a wind fall from some assignment he had in Hamakua.

Per usual, the conversation for the evening revolved around the latest evil doings at the West Hawaii Today, my former, their current, employer, and Karen piping in every now and then: "Maile, you need to start a blog."

Karen knows full well that master scribe I am not, however what prompts her encouragement of this undertaking is that I AM LEAVING KONA and going to CHINA. Yes. I am leaving.

Fucking-A, man.

Sitting in the top drawer of my plastic workspace is a bulging envelope. The contents of said envelope are a two-page itinerary, in duplicate, a set of plane tickets and my passport with a newly affixed L-visa to China. I leave on Wednesday.

I reckon only people that know me will ever be reading this, but here is the part where I feel it fit to write something about myself.

I am a 23-year-old wannabe. I currently live in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, and many will argue that this is where I'm from. I was born in Orange County, California and at the age of 7, my father uprooted us from our Southern Californian surburban life to fulfill his fantasy of retiring in Hawaii. (My dad is wicked old--79.) At 17, I "dropped out" of high school to attend Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. I studied film and up to a very recent point, my ambition in life was to be a filmmaker. (The ambition still bleeds through my current reality quite often, however a bit of elbow grease and patience prevents staining.) I lived in Boston for more than five years and it is in that land of bean and cod that I truly feel at home. Stupidity and impulsiveness propelled me to move to Los Angeles and after six months or so, my body, mind and soul fell apart and I dragged myself back to the Big Island to live with my dad.

And here I am. It has been 10 months and now I am ready to leave.

I am. I think. I hope.

I am bound for Dalian in Northern China. I've accepted a job teaching English at the Dalian Institute of Light Industry, a public university.

Bitchin'.