Friends Pt. 1

First post, and a reflection on the past year...


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When I look back on the past year, there really is no better place to start than at the beginning of the school year.  Sure, going to China by myself was quite the adventure, and every now and then I look back at that time and wish I was still there, but much of what I've gained has been gained through school.


But not through academics, mind you.


Friends come and go.  That's one thing that I learned early on in life, and it's something that has been with me ever since I was little.  However sad it may seem now, it was normal at the time.  As someone who grew up only knowing people closer to my brother's age, it was only natural that the people I was "friends" with would grow up before me...literally.  When I did have friends my age, they were nothing more than people I made jokes with and people I would play with at recess.  But what good did I know?  I was only in elementary school, anyway.


When people talk about childhood friends, I'll be the first to admit that there is quite a lot of envy and jealousy from me directed towards them.  Why?  Well, that's simple: I don't have any.  I have friends that I've known since my childhood, but again, we never grew any closer than the surface-level relationships that only kindergarten can conceive.  I went all the way through high school with the notion that that was what friends were: people to pass the time at school with.  There was no hanging out after school, or on the weekends for that matter, and there was even less hanging out as people started to realize the importance of school a la high school.  It wasn't until college that I realized that I yearned for something that I didn't have.


I went through welcome week at the University of Michigan with one goal in mind: to really spread out my time among a variety of different clubs, none of which even held a tiny bit of my interest.  Coming here, I knew four other people from my high school and one, maybe two other people from elsewhere.  I thought maybe if I consolidated their efforts, we would eventually have this large circle of friends that included everyone from my high school, along with everyone we met at the different clubs or activities or sports we joined.  How wrong I was.  There really is no one to blame but myself.  Can I use myself as a scapegoat?  Unfortunately not.


To be frank, joining a Christian community, let alone an Asian Christian community, was the least of my worries.  Growing up in a predominantly Caucasian community has taught me a thing or two about how I communicate with people, especially since the population of Asians in my area turned out to be a majority Korean rather than, you know, Chinese.  It was because of this community that I was often asked if I was Korean and not, well, again, Chinese.  This isn't a story of identity crisis, but more of a reason why I never really identified with my Asian side when I was out in public.  It's because there was nothing to identify with.


To be continued, because I'm lazy...