Make it better...or get out.

That's my motto in Korea.

There are already so many things that I see everyday that make me say to myself, "That's not how they do it in America." But does that help anyone? Does what works in America actually work in Korea? Or is it forcing people to change the rules around to fit a different set of rules that are right for a different country? DIFFERENT country, and why not...America is a country where people fight about whether or not it's a salad bowl or a melting pot, and of course it's both.

What makes me hold my tongue from spewing out all of these problems is based upon my past, an obsessive time in my life where I was SO fed up with my family that I only the problems between us and it was the only thing I talked about. And you can just imagine what kind of backlash the YOUNGEST of the household gets after complaining about everyone. "What right do you have to say anything? Do you have a job? Did you buy anything in this house? Do YOU pay the bills? Who do you think pays for YOUR comfort?" It wasn't me, that was for sure.

And the interesting thing about these family problems was that I often mixed them around with the subjects that I was learning at school. It is easy to do that when you're an in-stater and your parents are just an hour away. I just jumped into my car, sped on home, and was face-to-face with my parents in less than an hour. Therefore, when considering the amount of race discourse one hears on a college campus, it's easy to see how my associations with my family problems often floated back to my race. And, yes, my parents are completely Korean.

But they were never the ones to talk about what being Korean meant to them, instead, it was my brother, my sister, and my cousins, who were a few years my senior, the kids caught in between, who helped me through a lot of the mysterious and frurstrating sides to being stuck in the middle, without anyone explaining or going through the potential problem areas for you..

After causing a ruckus within my family, what did I decide to to?

MOVE OUT and try to make it on my own. TRY is the operative word here.