Blog Post#1 Stranger in a Strange Land

 I experienced a lot of situations indicate 'Stranger in a Strange Land', just like any other teenagers but a little bit more, I believe. Even little tiny things but bother you more than people think when they hear about it, and I assume all of us have experienced that kind of situation. The most common 'Strange Land' is the new school. Especially when you're in high school and especially the first week, sometimes it can be the first month- of the new school year. It makes you almost cry when you get to eat lunch alone by yourself (but then when someone who you slightly remember the face, comes and sits by you, there's no way to describe how adorable he/she is at that moment).

 I've already been to five schools since I was seven. I notice, the younger you're, it's easier to get along with new friends. When I was nine, I could just walk up to the play ground and make ten friends right away without knowing each others' names.

 Ever since I was ten years old, I started to move around my place. The scale wasn't that big at first; from Korea to China. The ticket was just cheap as $70, the time up in the air didn't even take an hour but we still had to drive a couple of hours to get to the town. I somehow made good friends on the first day of the school, and what I am really proud of is that I wasn't alone when I had the first lunch. Well, to shorten it, going to school in China was still easy for me to adapt. Everything was sort of similar as life in Korea, but language. I can't deny my Chinese reading and writing skills suck. Not even exaggerating, I had a hard time learning writing and reading, and now, me being in USA proves it- Imagine learning five thousands characters and still cannot even read a book, how frustrating? I couldn't find any interest in that. However, I say my speaking and listening comprehension skills were pretty good. But, what I found really difficult being a stranger is the weight of languages. I started to feel it while I was in China, learning the second language. And the matter just got real when I got to USA. What I mean by the 'weight of languages', is even when I say same things in both languages, the true meaning, or the seriousness of how people take it, is different. It is a little bit embarrassing, but to be honest, when I first went to the American school in Chicago -to give a prior notice, my school was a little bit ghetto- I got into a fist fight with a kid called me motherfuxxer. Well, it still is a pretty bad word but, not a big deal. Would've let it go. I don't know what Americans think, however, in Korea we couldn't even think of insulting each other's parents. When you tell your friend 'your mom is fat' in USA, he gives a comeback, but in Korea, he gives a good punch in your face. This example is kind of aggressive, but in the other hand, as it is, teaches the importance of the 'weight of language' really well. You know how in English, when teacher picks a student to read the paragraph, they say "Augustin, why don't you just read the next paragraph?" This is still embarrassing, i just pissed off when my World History teacher said it. I literally felt so awful and talked back(almost shouted back). "It's the FIRST time you told me to read and why do you talk to me like I NEVER listened to you?" Being in a bad mood also helped, but the way she told me to read wasn't in a good manner of language in Korean. 'Why don't you...' indicated the phrase in Korea, used when someone's bothering, not doing the right thing that was told. I surely had a fair reason to be upset.

 I can relate the 'weight of language' to the difference between cultural thoughts. And still the most difficult thing I'm facing is the same thing. I often think the reason why it's hard to fit in for F.O.B Asian kids, is because of it, both American kids and Asian kids are not fully understood by what each other's saying. However, we believe it is fair when we get to learn new phrases used in different ways which is mostly cool and make ourselves think as fluent native speakers(It really did when I first learned 'What's up?')!