The sixth in a series looking at U.S. life and culture through its idioms.  View previous entries.

YOLO – You only live once

A friend who I had met at a hostel in Philadelphia recommended I get a tattoo with the inscription “YOLO,” which stands for “You Only Live Once.” I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but suddenly it seemed to capture something about my life.

Through my experience in the U.S. I have come to be, not someone else exactly, but a more defined, and perhaps better, version of myself, who seeks adventure rather than comfort, and who prefers new experiences over routine.

The person I was a few months ago wouldn’t have been friends with someone I’d met in a hostel, and the person I was a few months ago definitely wouldn’t have been genuinely considering getting a tattoo.

I don’t think it’s the U.S. itself that has made me change, but rather to the opportunity to gain some distance from my normal life and look at it from the outside, gaining a different perspective. I’ve left my country and my family, I’ve adapted to a new environment and culture, I’ve made new friends, I’ve assimilated to different work practices, adopted new habits, learned about other people. All of this has forced me out of my comfort zone and made me question who I am and what I used to believe.

This process of self-examination led me to one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made in my life, which was to break up with my boyfriend. We’d been together for ten—yes, ten—years, lived together for three (in a house we own together and built from scratch), and every single memory since I was sixteen is by his side.

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In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one. If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#4
Why do International Students Crave Food From Home?
Contributions from Mohammed al-Suraih, Sebastian Sanchez, Javaria Khan

A common complaint among international students is how much they miss their native cuisine, so it’s no surprise that one of our most popular posts of 2012 was one examining just what it is about food that makes it so important to international students.

We learned that food interacts with your brain in some unique ways. Not only do you start forming your food preferences before you’re even born, so that by the time you study abroad some of your tastes for native food are pretty deeply engrained, but food is also deeply tied to memory, so nostalgia and food cravings become intertwined.

Read it: “3 Things You Don’t Know About Food and Why International Students Crave Cuisine From Home“

But one of the most interesting things we learned about food is that what you eat is part of who you are; food and identity are linked together.

In fact, one reason why international students miss native food so much is because they’re also missing the stable sense of identity they had back home.  Studying abroad redefines your sense of who you are, what you want, and what you believe, and it can be a difficult process.

We saw just how difficult in Senzeni’s examination of how her self image changed during a year in the States, one of our most moving posts of 2012. ”The certainty I once had about what I wanted to see and achieve is gone, the answers replaced by more and more questions about myself and my path,” she wrote.

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Thailand’s Songkran water festival, held in April (Photo: Reuters). Is this part of my identity?

I still remember a conversation I had with my high school friends one day, when I told them that I wanted to study in the U.S.: “I don’t think I’d ever go there,” said one of my friends. “It seems too liberal and dangerous.”

I also remember another moment, when I was at a store with my mother, and she had told the shopkeeper that I attended an international school: “Learning English is a good skill, but I don’t think I want my kids in that kind of school,” he said. “I don’t want them to be Westernized.”

Although I attended an American international school, few of my friends actually went abroad for college. Most stayed in Thailand, a handful went to colleges either in England or Australia, and I was the only one to go to the U.S. The prevailing attitude was that while, sure, the U.S. offered a good education, it was just a bit too far, too expensive, and too different. When one of my friends expressed interest in going to an American college, her parents dissuaded her, saying that they wanted her closer by.

To me, getting away was the exactly the point; staying in Thailand was the last thing on my mind. I had graduated from high school, seen all my close friends leave, and was overcome by the feeling that I was done with it all – that there was absolutely nothing left for me in Thailand, and there was nowhere to go but away.

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“Hey, who are you?” The straightforward question came to me in my first day as a high school student in America.

I was about to begin the biography-like chronicle of my life, as I would when I was back in Afghanistan, when it hit me. Who was I, indeed?

What do Americans think of when they see this? Probably not me.

It was then that I truly realized I no longer lived in Afghanistan, where I was Abuzar Royesh, a moderately well-known student in one of the best high schools in Kabul. At that moment all the adjectives I would normally use to describe myself felt hollow and empty. Who cared what my name was or how popular I was back in Afghanistan?

I realized that the farther I got from Afghanistan, the more pieces of my identity fell away. Here in the U.S. I no longer was a Hazara, a tag that distinguished me from the people of other ethnicities, a Ghaznichi (from Ghazni Province), as the inhabitants of other provinces would identify me. My most important piece of identity was not even “Abuzar Royesh,” the birth name my parents chose to for me.

Here in the U.S. I was first and foremost an Afghan: a title that conjured up Taliban and al Qaeda, war, killings, and explosions.

Cough. I cleared my throat, “I am Abuzar. I am an exchange student from Afghanistan…” Before I finished my sentence I could already see the astonishment in his eyes.

“Wow! So cool. How did you make it here?”

I started to explain my story. But just as I began the entire monologue I had memorized in response to this question, he spurted out the next one.

“What is life like in Afghanistan?”

I now attempted to answer this question. Again, before I could get my words out, further questions started showering me incessantly. I couldn’t understand his thirst for interrogating me about Afghanistan. Having lived all of my life in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to me Afghanistan was merely a country; a homeland, just like all others. I felt as ordinary in my country as any kid from the U.S. or France would feel in theirs.

Would you imagine that this is Afghanistan? It is. (Photo: Reuters)

But seemingly this wasn’t what he thought of my country. As I would learn later on, to him and many other Americans, Afghanistan was just a remote land where thousands of American soldiers sacrificed their lives in a doomed attempt to bring democracy and stability, and where billions of American dollars had vanished. They were apparently startled to meet someone actually from there; someone who had a different story from what they knew.
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I smile wryly as I go through my freshman photos. It is hard to believe that just 2 years ago, I arrived in the United States, fresh-faced and starry eyed; weighed down by suitcases, expectations and an overwhelming fear of the unknown. In my head, as well as in my diary and journal, was a clear strategy of how I would ‘attain greatness’.

It amazes me to look back and realize how drastically my interests have changed, how dramatically my intellectual aspirations have evolved and how even my fears are not the same anymore.  The certainty I once had about what I wanted to see and achieve is gone, the answers replaced by more and more questions about myself and my path.

After the snow

My friend and I enjoying our first day in the snow.

Prior to my arrival in the States, I had only seen snow on television. It was with great anticipation and excitement that I waited for the first snowy day.  I vividly recall my first encounter with snow: It was one of those mornings when I would steal glances at the rising sun from behind my computer while frantically working to finish a paper. From my common room window, I noticed the ice crystals slowly dropping to the ground.

The sight was breathtaking.  I dropped all my work, raced to the window; and saw that Yale’s courtyard had been transformed into a picturesque scene from a Disney movie. The beauty of what I was seeing almost moved me to tears.

Snow in Silliman College – Frank Teng MC ’13

Of course, the novelty has long since worn off. With snow comes the obligation to wear layers of coats, all of which have to be removed upon entering a building.  There is also the hassle of having to trudge to class in ridiculous snow boots. And after a snow comes the ‘freezing rain,’ which covers the roads with ice, turning the simple task of walking into a Hunger Games-esque challenge.
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I’m Chinese, but kinda American.

Since August 16, 2008, the day I arrived in the United States, I have been asked thousands of times, “Where are you from?” For most Chinese students studying abroad, the automatic answer would be, “Yea, China of course!” However, for some, it is not as simple as the nationality presented on their red, Chinese passports.

This summer, a Chinese friend of mine from Syracuse University visited me in Beijing after spending a semester studying abroad in Europe with a few American students. “I enjoyed my stay in Spain so much last semester,” she told me, speaking in Mandarin Chinese interspersed with some English terms. She showed me pictures of various parties with other American students, and said, “The American culture I adopted last semester was more than what I had tried for the past three years. I feel I’m so American right now and I nearly forgot how to speak Chinese when I just came back to China from Spain.”

I felt happy for her for feeling comfortable “being so American.” However, her words left me in deep thought as well; do we, Chinese students studying in the US, have to “act like Americans” in order to live comfortably in this country?

My freshman year, I had a culture clash with my American roommate and felt very isolated from the American students in the dorm. The reason was simple: I didn’t party with them, nor did I talk to them often.

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You know that feeling you get when someone doesn’t remember your name? That mix of embarrassment, hurt pride and annoyance as you repeat your name again, and again…and again?  It’s all too common for an international student in the U.S., as your name is likely to trip up most Americans.

Last week we had a bit of fun at my friend Kate’s expense, letting you hear how an American might pronounce (or mispronounce) your name if you studied here.  This week our bloggers weigh in on their experiences, and the various ways they’ve coped with introducing themselves by name in a country where the most common reaction is likely to be, “Can you say that again?”

Jamal Janybek

Actually it’s a funny story. So first of all, they misspelled my name in my international passport in that office in my country, where they initiate these sort of documents (I honestly don’t know how this office is called). My “real” full name in the passport was supposed to be Jamal Janybek kyzy (2 last words are my last name). But instead, they wrote it as Zhamal Zhanybek kyzy, which sounds absolutely wrong and I hate the spelling, as it seems very odd and weird. Kate can try to pronounce it, if she can.

Here you go, Jamal.  How’d she do?

And I didn’t mention that the name Jamal in other parts of the world is usually a male first name, which is really funny. Cemal (pronounced as “Jemal”), is a very common male name in Muslim countries such as in Turkey, Iran, and others. Moreover, Jamal, as you probably know, is a name commonly given to African-American boys. And almost everybody before meeting me thinks that I am a boy (LOL). So, when I meet somebody, the first question for me is that why I have a male name.

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Meet Jihye Choi – journalism student, VOA intern, and photographer extraordinaire.  She has recently come to Washington, D.C. from Bucheon, South Korea and has been sharing her journey with us in photos.  Here are some of her most recent pictures and stories (which she’s written in English AND Korean!):

Hello Everyone! It’s really nice to meet all of you. I’m Jihye Choi, who’s interning at Voice of America. I’d like to tell you a short story about what I see in this great city, Washington D.C. Above shows my ‘former’ identity in South Korea before I came here. If you’re interested in the new identity and adventures I will find in this city, please don’t hesitate to follow me!

안녕하세요 반갑습니다! 저는 Voice of America에서 인턴을 하고 있는 최 지혜라고 해요. 여기서 저는 제가 보는 워싱턴에 대해 이야기를 해보려고 합니다. 사진은 워싱턴에 오기 전에 제가 가졌던 현금과 학생증이에요. 말하자면 ‘구’ 정체성인셈이죠! 앞으로 제가 워싱턴에서 찾을 또다른 제 모습과 모험, 궁금하시다면 계속 클릭클릭!

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If there is one word that I think gives some sense on what things are like in the United States, it is “diversity.” America has the wide range of racial, ethnic and religious diversity that it’s known for, but there are also a wide variety of lifestyles and opinions in this country. These also form identities to some degree, and groups rally or coalesce around such aspects of society as clothing, music, slang, the arts, or politics.

What you wear and who you are

That’s not to say that such diverse methods of defining identity do not exist in other countries, but in Armenia, for example, they are mostly marginal phenomena. In fact, what really got me interested at first in this question of subcultures is the recent trend of police targeting “emos” in Armenia. I did not even know what emos were when I first heard about this, so I spoke with a couple of friends at college and did some research online to discover more about this group. It turns out to involve adopting a certain style of music and clothing, which is very expressive and angsty (there also seems to be some documented correlation between emos and self-harm, but why they are being so seriously investigated in Armenia remains a mystery to me).

Although I can’t say I can confidently point out specifically emo music and clothing, I have noticed the way music and wardrobe define various subcultures here in the U.S. The manifestations of those two elements stand out very clearly in the hip-hop world.

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Setting down my heavy, chock-full plate, I took off my jacket and sat down next to Chen, my friend from China. As usual, she was enjoying a wok dish of fried noodles with chicken and vegetables. I watched as she turned to look at my plate and, in a mocking tone, uttered her latest discovery: “Hoang, you’re so ‘Americanized.’”

I rolled my eyes at her, then at our plates, and burst out laughing. Chen joined in the laugh, seeming to share a mutual understanding. The stark contrast between our plates said it all. On my plate was a sizable cheese burger, sitting on top of a bunch of curly fries, accompanied by plenty of ketchup and pickle slices to round up the over-packed plate. Meanwhile, Chen’s plate looked a little more vibrant with sauteed vegetables and noodles mixed up in some kind of oriental sauce.

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