A year isn’t very long but as I read through what I wrote for my last year’s birthday, I almost could not believe that a year has passed and here I am sitting in front of my desktop alone in my room have grown a year older but none wiser. This is what many of us do as we grow older, we flashback to the past years and recollect bittersweet memories. What things I would have done differently? I wish I had done that. Or I shouldn’t have done this. The rewind began at when I was in my sweet 16 when I first met my dearest mentor and the impact she has brought to my life. She even continued to influence me after I met the first man in my life who shared my youth for 3 and half years. In spite of the most two important people who had changed my life dramatically in varied ways before I turn 21, I do not think my innate characters have shifted even slightly. You might say it’s because I have not experienced life enough or at all, which I just could not agree enough as a idiom goes in Mandarin 「打鐵趁熱」”da3 tie3 chen4 re4 – Strike while the iron is hot”; being 21, the iron still burns to be forged. What do I know about life?

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Throughout my 10 days in Thailand, one of the most unforgettable things is that I had been mistaken as a Thai. Thai people spoke Thai to me and I replied in Thai in the first two or three sentences then in English. Do I really look Thai? Well, I think I look more Thai than Thai people themselves. The reason why I would say that is because I have become so much tanner and I would rather take their remark as a compliment than an insult because Thai people are so beautiful, as far as I am concerned. 

Thailand is the second foreign country I have visited and this was the first time my nationality was being questioned or doubted. Growing up in Taiwan and having surrounded by people from different nationalities and ethnicities, I had listened to their frustration and struggle which they have to go through, not by choice. I never had to deal with their dilemma and having come back to Taiwan, I still don't have to. I live under the privilege entitled to citizens only as well as the convenience of communicating in my own mother tongue; moreover, I did not have to adapt myself to a foreign food, culture and environment. However, having spent 10 days in Thailand which is the longest period I have spent by far in a foreign country, I have experienced, if slightly, the challenge all my foreign friends are going through every single day.

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