ReidaBlog

Most of you know by now but for those that don’t I’ve quit my job at Deloitte and moved back to Beijing.

When I originally decided I wanted to learn Chinese my plan was to spend some time in Beijing to determine if it was for me and if it was then I’d go back to school at Cornell where they have a very well reknown Asian language program. However during my previous stay I found out that instead of paying about $30,000 for a year at Cornell I could pay $2400 for a year at Tsinghau. Interestingly, one of the selling points for the Cornell program is that the last quarter of the program (about April-June) they leave Ithaca, come to Beijing, and complete the course at Tsinghau. Add the fact that in China I’m forced to practice the language every day and you end up with pretty compelling case to just cut out the middle man.

The hardest part of the decision turned out to be deciding that I was going to leave Deloitte. I’ve really liked working there the past 5 years. It was a great job and had people I enjoyed working with. But I figure this is something I wanted to do and since it doesn’t get any easier as the years pass I might as well take the plunge.

So today I’ve just moved into a 2 bedroom apartment that I’m sharing with a girl (Ranee) from Mauritious. I start class on Tuesday but still have a bunch of stuff to take care of before then so it will be a busy couple of days.

As a note, with my Deloitte address no longer functioning you can write to me at: rgalas@gmail.com