#internationalproblems

http://cdn.smartphowned.com/2012/1/25/2dff15a89f3053a3c5dd4a445f61a854.jpg

Story of my life.

Him: Does that brisket mean anything to you?

papa lee woke up super early to chat with me today, i'm feeling the love (: i updated him on the whole bus card & how i dont plan on having a phone while staying in the UK .. he gave me some encouraging words & told me the bus card was a great investment (: i just downloaded a map of all the places i can go with this baby, and i plan on checking out every inch of norwich before i leave. i dont think my itouch will last much longer though .. currently, its frozen with the apple logo and i'm just waiting for the battery to die so i can try to reboot the system. sigh, please don't die on me.

nick asked me to accompany him to go buy a basketball today so we went over to the city center together. we found out though that there's going to be some student discount this Thursday, from 5-9 PM so nick plans on buying the basketball then. it was about £28 for one basketball .. what is with the prices here -____- instead, nick got some socks that were on sale. & then we went to this photobooth place so he could print out a couple of ID photos for his visa. afterwards, we bought a drying rack for boris & then got some non-alcoholic drinks at pound land, & headed back home. we bumped into one of nick's previous classmates and the two of them chatted it up a little.. all in chinese.

sigh, i don't know how to explain to my chinese brothers that i want them to speak comfortably in chinese but at the same time, it's so frustrating not being able to understand a single word! now i can catch a few words when the topic is related to food .. but other than that .. argh the struggle.

nick noticed something was wrong though, & tried to get me to talk to him - but i have no idea how to word my struggle without offending him.. not only that, but i feel a bit disloyal to my Korean heritage. this sucks & so lately i've been keeping silent during most of the conversations that go on.. and tonight, fred pointed out to me that it was quite obvious that i don't talk to them as much as i talk to nick .. or derek for that matter, when he's around. and i realized that i've been looking at this ordeal only through my eyes, and not theirs.

so now i will try harder to participate in their conversation .. i don't really know how to start. but.. i'm not going to give in. i'll keep trying, learn more chinese, be more confident in who i am.. man, i can never escape this.