Letters to Lisa Part 9

Letters to Lisa Part 9
Me and Foreigners (part one)
Dateline: Everyday

Dear Lisa,

I think this will be relatively short. I think….. lol
Quick background.. When I first got to Taiwan, the only foreigners I ever saw were co-workers. Then one day I saw some foreigners on the street. I smiled real big and gave them a hearty Midwestern “HI!”. They looked at me like I had the plague and walked away. “Hmmm…. What’s up with that?” After having this experience several times, I decided just to not try to talk to foreigners. I just pissed me off. How dare they be so smug, they are foreigners in this country too. Oh, by the way, they were all white.
Then one day, I saw my first Black foreigner in a Blockbuster. We both looked up with similar amazement and trepidation. I’m thinking, “Is he gonna blow me off too?” The difference is he smiled and me and smiled at him. Then I got the courage to talk to him. He was a nice guy; part African part Taiwanese.

Then I saw a few more black people, again African. They were university students. Another black guy saw me on the street. He was on a motorcycle. He stopped and came back to meet me. Again, he was from Africa, an engineer. No… I don’t know why I keep running into Africans.

I’ll tell you a secret. Yes, I did ask them if they had they same experiences with white people. Yes, they did. Also, did they find have the same experiences with women. Yes, they did.

What does it all mean? Who knows? And for me at this stage of my life, it’s really not worth the extra brain energy it takes to figure it out. But I have to say, it was comforting to be affirmed in my own experiences and feelings.

Letters to Lisa Part 10

Letters to Lisa Part 10
Me and Foreigners (part 2 – Co-Workers)
Dateline: Everyday

Dear Lisa,
This will be super short. (OK, you can stop mocking now.) ;-)
I write this largely because my Taiwan friends really don’t understand me sometimes. They understandably feel that as a foreigner I would seek the company of those like me, also a foreigner, so I don’t feel so lonely. I do not have foreigner friends, not even the 7 foreign teachers that are my co-workers. Let me define friend. A friend is someone I do stuff with. I spend time with them. I can call them at a moments notice and say, “Let’s do something.” And more importantly, I tell them what I really think and how I’m feeling. I tell them my secrets. They are IN my life.

My co-workers are people I work with. They are nice. Some are funny and I will have the occasional meal or beer with. But I don’t talk about personal stuff. They don’t know my secrets. With exception of Alex, they are not my Facebook friends. (Alex is a letter for another day.) I am quite fond of a few of the guys. Maybe someday they’ll be Friends. Or maybe we will stay comfortably in the co-worker zone.

Here is the one thing that truly separates me from the overwhelming majority of the foreigners I know. I want to immerse myself in Taiwan life and culture. I want to live like Taiwan people. If wanted to be around westerners, I should have stayed in the US. Besides, the foreigners I know here are not people that would be my friends in the US. So why would I hang out with them here?

My philosophy in this experience is, I’m an empty cup. I want my cup to be filled with Taiwan.