DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

Me in my room 

 

   It was dark and cold. Me and my friend Jihye stepped inside our dorms and looked around. There was a kitchen with shelves full of food. There were two sofas and a lamp in the living room. A high-pitched, female voice came from one of the rooms. We instantly felt the warmth of the room, even though we were exhausted. But we couldn’t go to sleep because we were excited. We finally met the girl with the high-pitched voice.

“Hi, my name is Kirsty. I’m an exchange student from Australia.”

  

   We talked about how excited we were and how we became interested in becoming exchange students. We also discussed where we could buy food or where specific buildings were located. I felt like I was starting my freshman year again. Little did I know that this same room would soon become a sanctuary of peace and familiarity.

 

   I looked around Stony Brook. It was large. I thought I would always have to take the SBU transit map with me to not get lost, which turned out to be wrong. Soon I was walking from my dorm to the SAC without even thinking. I would walk slowly, looking at the seagulls flying by, trees standing still with thick layers of snow, and some people exercising with their breath emitting from their mouths. Sometimes I would take the outer-loop bus even when the inner loop bus was waiting right in front to have a view around campus.

  

   I went to the gym in the afternoons. The thought that I didn’t see people who were in a hurry as much as in Korea came to me when I saw several people running on the treadmill. Back in Korea, there were many people running on campus, including myself, to catch up with our schedules. On average, we took about 18 credits. My mom often complained that Koreans tend to keep themselves too busy all the time. It was amazing that she still remembered the pace she used to have when our family lived in the Philippines years ago. As I worked out on my elliptical, I savored my slow-paced, pleasurable life.

 

   Sometimes I would eat with my friends from my IAP class after class in the student union. One of those friends is Edmen who is from Brazil. He introduced the rest of us to his other Brazilian friend and a friend from Hong Kong. Once we discussed whether Chinese people really eat cockroaches and Koreans eat dog meat. We accepted the truth that people in our country eat them, but emphasized that we ourselves did not enjoy eating them. Edmen ‘confessed’ that they ate some kind of tree after burning it because it was believed to take away all the poisons in the body. In the end we concluded that all cultures have peculiar things that people with different cultures cannot fully understand.

 

   I also had a chance to introduce my country’s food to my friends from other countries. I often went shopping to Smith Haven Mall with my friends. We usually ate brunch and went there to save money. The food there is expensive and there isn’t much to choose from. When I went there with Jingxia, one of my Chinese friends, she asked me if I had ever eaten somewhere else close to Smith Haven mall. I hadn’t, but I remembered that I saw a Korean BBQ restaurant so we went there. Jihye and I also made Korean dishes sometimes and made our suitemates try them. I was so excited when my suitemates enjoyed it!

 

   All the food from different countries was exotic. I cautiously assumed that there would be an even bigger difference in the ideologies or moral aspects of each countries’ or nations’ culture. But we were rather interested in these differences and tried to learn about each other’s cultures. We also found out similar aspects between cultures or thoughts.

 

   There were people who were open to other cultures and people who were not. Back in Korea, my friends asked me whether I experienced racial discrimination or not. At that time I told them that I hadn’t experienced any of it. But now as a grownup I experience it sometimes. When I asked a lady working at Penn Station where I should go to take a train, she said she didn’t know even before I finished my sentence. I thought of telling her that I am not stupid. She should have at least waited until I finished speaking. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to say what I thought right away in English especially when I was angry and I was in a hurry. I just gave up and asked another person that looked Asian. She gave me directions so I was able to take the 7:40 train. My friend also experienced this several times, and made a sad conclusion – that most of the people here do not deem us as equal to them and that, therefore, we cannot become close friends with them. She didn’t like to go to parties where we could meet people from other countries or to be a member of a club. She tried to speak Korean, not English. I did know that some of the people thought this way, but I didn’t want this knowledge to limit my relationship with other people. Not all western people think this way, and even if they did have that thought at first, their thoughts could change when they actually got to know and be friends with the people that they initially had a bias against.

 

   Another of my friend’s arguments was that it would be less fun to be friends with people who are from other countries because we have different languages and would not be able to talk about all the thoughts we have inside us. Or even vice versa. We would not be able to filter our thoughts so that we wouldn’t intentionally hurt someone.

“This happens in our home school, too. Have you ever seen local students become friends with exchange students, except for the exchange-student guides?”

I agreed with her on this one, and when I made other Korean friends I felt that they were feeling the same, too.

“I think my personality changed a bit after I came here. Back in Korea I was quite active and lively, but nowadays I often get tired and sleepy. Maybe it’s because I am exhausted of continuously translating Korean into English and English into Korean.”

But still I couldn’t bear this being a barrier because I have already given into the language barrier so many times. I did not like the idea of avoiding this problem when I came here all the way from Korea. So I watched many tv programs so that I can learn more new expressions or the general thoughts of people here about relationships and society, and sometimes initiated conversations that lead to things about Korean culture. I also practiced expressing the most out of the least amount of  words and facts that I knew.

 

   My suitemates and I gathered in Andrea’s( one of our suitemates) room. Andrea asked,

“Does it smell awful when I smoke?”

I said, “Yeah, it does at first. But before I knew it, there was a strong scent of flowers.”

My original sentence was, ‘Yes it does. But I don’t mind because I can close my door and after a few minutes it doesn’t smell anymore because you can spray all kinds of hair spray and air refreshener in the air.’

 

   I would also try to describe a situation with body languages, expressions and sounds.

“How was the musical ‘Mamma Mia’?”

I opened my eyes wide and mimicked the musical singers dancing. “Mammamia! It was terrrrrrrific!” I rolled my rs like a Spanish girl.

 

   I learned in my linguistics class that there were about 6,912 languages in the world. But there are similar aspects to all these languages. They all have verbs and subjects. Some sounds in some languages do not exist in other languages, but most of the sounds of a specific language can be written down by the letters of another language. I kept practicing so I wouldn’t limit my thoughts through a new language so that if I became a novice of another language, by any chance, I would still be able to speak with limited words and expressions. There are times when abstract thoughts that cannot be expressed by language come to me. I still try to specify and materialize these thoughts.

 

   Language will not be the only thing that I will make the most of out of the least. I would like to do this in other aspects of my life. I want to make what people believe as trivial - things that do not seem to be so important such as being one of the 40 singers of a choir – important. i am in a club that has 40 members called the Westminster choir club. No one will notice if I stop singing on the stage during performances with my club members. However, to produce a great harmony, all the members have to gather and practice for hours. If I feel that these moments of practice is not important or feel burdened about it, I would not be able to keep tune with all the members. I try to find happiness from small things while being together with my club members.

 

   Especially when I become a teacher, I would like my students to work to their potentials and make the most of it. People should do what they want to. This is when their potentials will be developed to the highest point. There are many kids that are suppressed by the high expectations of other people that are not related to their own dreams. I tried living up to my teachers’ and parents’ expectations. I didn’t have much chance to look into myself and think about what I really wanted to do.

 

   My writing and IAP class helped me in the process of finding out more about myself. I liked the fact that there is no right or wrong answer when presenting to my classmates about what I think about something. I laughed to myself as I thought of the professor asking us to write an essay about why students do not tend to speak in class back in Korea. It’s probably because we are not used to saying our subjective feelings. We are more used to memorizing facts and saying things that seem to be objective. I was excited that I could write personal essays, finding out about myself. I rarely had the chance to do this because all I had written were academic papers, or even if they were about me, they were to be used for university or volunteer work applications.

 

   I usually did this work in my room when I was alone. My room was quiet enough and had just the right temperature to keep me focused. Then when I get tired of thinking too much about myself, I would go out to the living room and talk with my suitemates. Just below our suite is where the dorm parties are often held. I would go downstairs and open the door where the music is coming from. The same sofas are arranged in different ways and the kitchen table is turned into a beer pong table. Only the lamps are on and the room is filled with people holding cups in their hands. I get an offer of a beer, too. My heart begins beating as fast as beat of the music while I introduce myself to the people who are endlessly coming in through the same door that I came in through. It was as if people came from all over the world – Haiti, Spain, Australia, England, India, China, France, you name it. When I come back to my apartment, Andrea is sleeping on the couch in the living room with one of her sisters. The sunlight peeks in through the gap of the curtains. My heartbeat slows down again and I calm down, but I still feel awake. I met and heard about different people and culture as much as I drank. This difference, fun and excitement that followed it exists because I exist. There would be nothing to compare if all the people were the same. I am one of the elements that make the difference. There is no one on this planet that is identical to me.

 

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VOlI-SCNUzN2muCFjeehVBZeG3BJK7FDUq85Sw_39-I/edit?pli=1#

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Sometimes I had too many thoughts inside me that mingled together that I myself got confused of. I always feel that I need to somehow arrange these thoughts. This writing class was a great opportunity for me to read and comment the amazing works of my classmates and also write my own work and get comments for my writing.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.