Introduction

 


 I'll get a new picture eventually, but this one is so good! Chandon vineyards in Australia.


Hey guys, it's me, Nikki. The first time I started a blog, Black Girl in China (lost to time and my own stupidity 😭), it was 2012, and I was on my way to Wanzhou, Chongqing, China. It was my first time traveling internationally (except for a week in an all-inclusive resort in Mexico back in the 90s - is Club Med still around?), and my first job teaching English as a foreign language...actually, my first time teaching English at all! It was the beginning of what became an amazing new career in teaching English as a foreign language internationally. 

I've now taught in three countries: China for three, South Korea for five, and Mexico for one. I've started and ended an accent-reduction/Standard American English Pronunciation coaching business, started a master's in Education, dropped out, started another master's in Instructional Design (only three classes left!), traveled to a dozen countries or more, with plans to travel to lots more. In fact, I was offered a job in Brunei, on the island of Borneo, teaching in a government high school there, when all the weird symptoms I'd been having over the past several months finally got a name...

Cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer.

Well, that blew things up a bit.

This blog is basically going to be my ramblings about my diagnosis, my treatments (whenever I start them - more on that very soon, I believe), and the life-changing experience I'm just beginning.

Despite the seriousness of the diagnosis, I still hope to go to Brunei. I still hope to go to a lot more countries. I still hope.

I'm still looking forward, even when I'm sad, or angry, or down. 

I still have hope.

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