One important difference: I don't speak any Chinese and the students spoke basic English. When I say basic, of course I mean their English was very good. So, I surfed along with them, just eating whatever they gave me and randomly buying necklaces and bracelets. It was strange to have five people focus all their attention on asking you questions and learning about you. Maybe that happens more often than I realize?
At lunch, they went around the table and each asked me questions: Tell us about your family. Do you have a boyfriend? Are you a Christian? Do you like music? Do you drive in the States? Do you like to read books? Do you like the pace of life in the States? This went on for an hour, after having walked around for two hours and having several conversations.
They weren't being rude, in fact, they were being incredibly wonderfully hospitable! They were fascinated, and wanted to know about me. But, a few things came to light for me.
1) I'm really not used to talking much about myself. In "regla-ass" conversations, I end up being the listener usually, asking questions and drawing people out. I think most people have some kind of default setting in conversations, that's mine. There's something uncomfortable about changing that default for me, or maybe everyone feels that?
2) Those questions are so hard to answer. It's hard enough to answer questions about music, books, religion, etc for another English speaker, but figuring out how to articulate those answers for someone who doesn't fully speak your language feels impossible. It isn't, but many things are lost in translation for sure. It's a pretty great experiment in exploring yourself though. You really have to trim the fat from your answers, and you can't beat around the bush much. Or, you can just generalize and never really answer the questions. That's probably easiest, but I was too tired of not having a real conversation that I just dove in. Discussing the finer points of Sgt. Pepper's is never easy, especially through translation. But, we did it, at least partially.
3) It seems like there are at least two ways to have this experience: Lay back and let it wash over you, hoping you grasp something from the stream of experiences to hold onto and think over, but mostly just being carried along. Or, you can carefully examine it, try to suck the life out of every second that happens and work really hard to remember it all and make it a part of yourself. I'm sure there are lots of other ways to experience it too, but those are the two I've tried. Neither is perfect, you miss a lot either way and it ends up feeling like work sometimes. But, for now, I'll just be laying back and trying to pick out something every now and then to grasp at.
4) I've been running a lot at night here (Mom, please begin to breathe again, it's very well-lit) and in some ways it's been a saving grace these first few days. I have total alone time, and end up zoning out some, doing some processing in my head and even day dreaming about what various people might think about different things.
5) I've only been in Taoyuan three days. I haven't even started my internship. Who knows what this will even look like in a week?
6) The world does not stop because I'm in another country. This became painfully clear this morning for me, that the relationships you have with people don't change radically or get put on "growth hold" just because you're in another country. Things change just the same if I'm there or here or somewhere else. But it's a lot harder to figure all that out when you're so far away. It's also easier to just ignore it, but I'm pretty sure I've never ignored or brushed anything off. Let sleeping dogs lie is like the Anti-Dani Mantra. I WAKE ALL THOSE DOGS UP TO PLAY WITH THEM!
Alright, team. Keep your rally hats at the ready, maybe in a few weeks we'll put them on! Wait for it...
-Dani
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