First Post, Listen up!

My two month long winter break just ended two weeks ago. I originally came home to spend time with my newly sixteen year old sister, who consequently decided she wanted to spend her sophomore year in South Dakota. In the winter time. I watched her nearly freeze to death on my weather updates from the computer and felt guilty about my complaints of the Taiwan cold when talking to my friends in New Orleans. But school's finally started and a lot has already happened over the break, which I will catch up on later.

So here I am, back at home, home. Where my parents and grandmother live on the mountain (Yang Ming) and have been since I was fourteen. I'm back in my basement bedroom, the same one I've had since my grandmother moved in. I'm back on the same old island that I grew up on, feeling the awkwardness of Chinese battling the newly English-formatted mouth. Trying new things out, in a new place, or old things out in an old place. I'm currently taking a semester abroad, at home. Studying Theatre, as I was in the States, now at National Taiwan University, which I could not have gotten into except for the reason being that I applied from abroad. They love their foreigners, or they hate them because everyone else loves them. I've had the pleasure of growing up with ignorance on the both sides of not knowing that I'm in fact more Chinese than not. I hope that sentence proves something.

This whole blog idea was started with my Grandmother (Mother's side, not the one in Taiwan), who loves hearing about these things from various family members because she has very little technological skill herself. But she brought my attention to the average sufferings any twenty to twenty-one year old might be suffering and gave it a name "Re-Entry Shock"

As any scholar who leaves home for higher education knows, culture shock is something quite crippling and prominent when one goes to college. And for those fortunate enough to have the same experience twice in their first go at college, but in a new surrounding, they will have additional culture shock, but in my special case (cue lights) my grandmother titled it "Re-Entry Shock" which to some people might not mean a lot, but for me is really beginning to form some ground under my fears.

I'm not quite sure what this blog is to become, but I'll try my best to make it as critical and light-hearted as possible. Something in the neighborhood of one to five blogs a week. Nothing special.