Even though I'd only flown halfway around the planet, I felt like I was a world away when I first came to China. It was as if I'd fallen asleep on the plane and had woken up on Mars. It was all so exciting.

The wonder of China hasn't changed over the past three years. But I have.

I haven't become the least bit bitter or cynical. Generally speaking, I wake up a little happier every day I stay in China, albeit very accustomed to my surroundings.

Once the routine stopped being adventure, even adventure became routine - that was, until I decided to take a walk to the Yuan Dynasty Park in Beijing. Even though it is a two-minute walk from my home, I hadn't been there in more than half a year.

This place had captivated my imagination when I first arrived in China. It had been the first location in which I'd seen such ancient structures as Kublai Khan's city wall share a cityscape with modern high-rises. I was awed by its landscaping, by its history, by the taichi practitioners who filled its spaces.

Little had I realized my walk to revisit this park would become a journey of rediscovery of my host country's wonders.

For some reason, that day, the men performing kongzhu (Chinese yoyo) tricks; the way sinewy cedars crown khan's dusty wall; the phalanxes of ribbon-waving middle-aged women dancing to techno in front of massive statues got to me.

The fact that I'd lived in China for a while and had seen such things many times had become a reason to barely notice them. Because I'd been here for a while, however, it was an entirely different experience when I again paid close attention to them, because I now better understood their context.