As I’ve been mentioning often in my past blogs, I’m from South Korea. I do speak a perfect English, and I have lived in the U.S as well as England for some time, so naturally, I thought nothing should be different than back home. However, reality, as it always has and always will, has got the best of me.
The first day I came to this college, I was excited, pondering in my own trap of finding people exactly like those friends I had back home. However, on the very first day, I had to attend several seminars about sex-related issues, gender issues, and race issues.
That was shocking. To have so much personal boundaries and linguistic boundaries to deal with was simply overwhelming! I freaked out on the very first day of school and started distancing myself from everyone in this campus.
After a while it got better, and I was able to blend in with my collegues here at Pomona College. Nevertheless, I still cannot feel comfortable in situations where boys and girls start having casual conversations about sexual intercourse. I think such emotions will never go away for good, which seems grieves me so much, since the kind of music I want to do is only possible here in the U.S or in England.
Cultural shock was definitely there. Finally after two semesters of coping with it I have partially gotten over it and at the same time realized a sad truth. I will never be one of the Americans or as far as it goes Westerner. I will never be known as “one of us” here in U.S.
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