Long days..

I just got in not too long ago from buying a new ESL/EFL book for a new class that I'm teaching. It's called "Let's Talk" and it has a bunch of great scenerios that range from "The Haves and the Have Nots", to "My dad hates my boyfriend". It includes a brief passage about what the issue is about, a couple of interesting questions that ask about the meaning of some of the vocabulary, and sample dialogues that match the quaint scenerios. And I say quaint with no derogatory intention whatsoever, and instead view the scenerios as being a nice change of mood from the other popular buisness english dialogues based on 'business' situations. It's funny to think about multicultural relationships as being a business issue alone since a lot of people interact with people of different cultures everyday, outside of business settings. It's a very real part of our everyday lives that we choose to accept or just passby, I suppose.

And I then begin to think about my buying books and the season we are now in and I realize what my life would have been like had I not taken a break after high school, and kept going straight into college, which means no trip out to Seattle, no time spent with my brother in New York, and no time spent eating Dunkin Donuts everyday at the Comfort Inn. And that means that my life would have been completely different, so utterly different. I probably would have burned out my first year after studying so much and after all of the trouble with my boyfriend, like many kids from Michigan do since I think the Asian kids from Michigan get really exhausted by their overly goal-oriented parents. I would probably be in medical school by now. HA! That is so so so so scary to think about. Well, actually, I don't think I would be in medical school and to say that is discounting the times where I did go back to sciences, and I did volunteer at a hospice, and I did go for the volunteering at Motts hospital, but didn't show up. It wasn't easy trying to tell myself to let it go when everything else in my life felt like it was falling apart. College isn't all fun and games as the movies make it out to seem like, nor was I making it easy for myself.
And as the story goes, I came back from Korea in 2001 and threw that career path out the window (sort of since I went back to Physics a school year later and then working for my dad during my very last, last semester - talk about FIGHTING with oneself..OY VEY. I ain't Jewish, but I like saying it). And good riddance to medical school, anyway. I tried all that I could, no matter how crazy it was, and I left no stone unturned. I covered the map and criss-crossed U of M's campus a million times over, and I'm proud to say it. I think everyone should do that with U of M's campus and I would tell any undergrad to do the same. And, besides, it's not like I really want to still be a doctor, despite what people may think about when I recall my pre-med days, which were full of focused book learning that I miss - the focus that is. Instead, I probably would have still gone into community invovlement after coming back from Korea, and I think I would have still settled on Political Science as a major, too, since I did choose it based upon its appeal, my first couple of classes, and the thought of becoming a lawyer as my future career.

But all of that changed becuase that isn't what I really wanted out of life, and there was so much more to life that I learned from classes as a whole; when I learned to step back, take a look at the spectrum of classes that I had taken until my last semester, and then form my conclusions that's when the deeper ephiphanies of what my education really meant to me began to surface. Perhaps it was due to thinking about grad school, which really got the wheels turning, perhaps it was the weeding out that I went through for the Fulbright, or perhaps it was because I was just sort of ready to see my life within a broader context and I was thinking about making a trip out to Asia, which scared the begeezuz out of me with how Koreans used to treat Korean Americans. So I was ready to make sense of myself before I moved on to new stage of my life. And, boy, I wanted to be ready and fear was chasing me from behind.

But besides the fear that follows after making a lot of mistakes, and taking dramatically different steps, many of my experiences in the interim told me internally and externally that I was ready to grow up, to change, and to improve myself, and change I did. I set myself into high gear, and searched and searched and searched. And my trips abroad where always pivotal moments - there is always a reconciling of self that goes on when one travels; the clash of cultures that occurs within me and around me during each of these trips shakes my views of East and West and, now, it makes me think that more kids from america should have the chance to travel abroad more.

And now I'm ready again to cast another long look into my recent experiences and uncover some new interests, like my recent interest in other Asian cultures like Japanese culture and Chinese culture. And I feel somewhat bold by saying that I've become interested since it's been a while...to have this nervousness that isn't so much nerves, but more of a fascination of the unknown. And why not? There are so many people dabbling with the unknown, and I was around so many girls in the past who looked upon White guys and would say, "Don't like me because I'm Asian"-kind of look, and then flipped the hair and spun around with a "Like me because of ME" sort of cold shoulder. Although I remember that cold shoulder that many of us girls learn to have, and need in many dire circumstances. We are girls with many sides and many flavors and many real areas of weakness.

But then I wonder, how serious are these interests and am I just having fun? Am I just entertaining more ideas just to entertain them? Or, will something come out of all of this? It's a juggling act, and there is more that I would like to uncover..