The Last Time I Taught Chinese Offline Was 2016. Tomorrow, I Do It Again.

Tomorrow is my first day teaching offline for a company that signed up for my Survival Business Chinese course. Writing that gives me a flutter of nerves and a much bigger flutter of joy. Because the last time I walked into a company to teach Chinese in person was 2016. Eight years ago.

In all my years of teaching, the best experience I’ve had is going into a company and teaching face to face. A real room, a real team, an energy you can’t get through a screen. And then the pandemic happened, and like everyone, my teaching moved online overnight. I was grateful for the corporate work that kept coming, truly. But almost all of it was virtual. The thing I loved most quietly slipped out of reach and stayed there.

For eight years.

When I moved to Bangalore three years ago, I was clear about the dream. Teaching Chinese offline, in companies, across the city. In person, not online. I didn’t know when or how it would happen. I just kept walking toward it. And tomorrow, finally, I get to live it again.

I talk a lot about having faith that things arrive when you’re ready for them, and I know how passive that can sound. So let me be precise. I didn’t spend eight years waiting. I spent them working. I kept teaching online when offline wasn’t possible, kept refining, kept moving the company forward. Faith was never the opposite of effort. It was what kept me steady while I did the effort. When this door finally opened, I could walk through it precisely because I’d never stopped preparing.

Dreams seem to run on their own clock, not ours. Your job isn’t to force the timeline. It’s to stay ready, keep doing the work in whatever form is available, and trust that readiness and opportunity eventually find each other. Mine took eight years. Yours might take eight months, or eight more. But staying in motion is what makes you catchable when your moment comes around.

That photo, by the way, is from 2016, the last time I did this, at a corporate training in Gurgaon. It feels like a lifetime ago and no time at all.

Tomorrow, I walk back into the room. ❤️