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Pat and Pure teacher, Rinat by my side) as the airport check-in lady stared blankly at my fatigued/tear-filled eyes after informing me my luggage was past legal weight limits, Patrick’s high speed limbs were already ten steps ahead of me, wrestling and repacking my bags in the middle of the terminal’s glossy cement floor creating a snowstorm of books, boots and heavy items to the side that were questionably leave-behind-able or re-packable. Twenty minutes later my bags were cruising ten pounds lighter down the Air Canada conveyor belt and Pat and I were cheers-ing our Starbucks Americanos to three great years of teaching together in Asia. Now that’s a friend. We take care of each other’s baggage. My time in Asia was a gift, I inherited a second family. Between Soho, Sheung Wan, Causeway Bay, the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station and Central Hong Kong (where the original Pure Yoga studio stands 16 floors above) our worlds were inevitably joined - all 50 of us and growing. We would pass one another sometimes literally running through the city sprawl in half urban/half yoga clothes with out-of-the-shower hair dodging the obstacle course of inner city HK: double decker buses at mock speeds, rush hour elbows, the sharp matrix of umbrellas at eye-ball height during monsoon season, traders and bankers smoking and talking at frantic speeds, elevators, escalators, exhausted garbage collectors wheeling their precariously stacked carts of waste, haphazard construction crews dangling from scaffolding over the equally sketchy sidewalks. And like all families we drank wine and broke bread together, we were happy and sad together, practiced and pondered together, we met for coffee many mornings and walked the Versailles-esque malls with arms linked, we travelled together, spent Christmases and birthdays together, shared cabs and ferries together...we were together all of the time. Holidays in North America quickly faded into the dense humidity of Chinese culture. We found ourselves eating mooncakes instead of Easter eggs, receiving red envelopes of dollar bills instead of Christmas presents, eating leftover Chinese dumplings and doughy treats in the staff room fridges, watching fireworks during the Chinese New Year from each others rooftops, celebrating the ten year anniversary of Hong Kong’s hand-over from Britain. We hid during the anti-climatic typhoon warnings and created our own over our mats every day as teachers/students/friends. Above all, our friendships were founded on the tacit understanding of how much courage it took for all of us to uproot, teach and live in a totally different culture and climate than our own in one of the most intense cities on the planet. The ultimate test for all Hong Kongers is to be patient and present in a city, well, that is not! For even the strongest of constitutions, Hong Kong has the capacity to tip you upside down like an angry bouncer and shake your pockets of sanity, calm and repose if you let it. But it’s also a place that provides mind blowing opportunities and a vacuum-effect for inevitable change and transformation to occur. And for that I’m forever grateful. I extend a thousand pounds of gratitude in sweat, smiles and asanas to all the students, teachers and friends that have made my life so rich. Julia lives and teaches yoga in Vancouver. The ultimate test for all Hong Kongers is to be patient and present in a city, well, that is not! PATRICK LETS HIS HEART SHINE AT HIS RECENT WORKSHOP IN VANCOUVER 25