Coconuts

My friend Holly and I are like coconuts... we are brown on the outside, but white on the inside. We both were adopted from Korea and moved to the US where we had white (or at least semi-white) families (Holly also has an adopted brother). Despite being Asian, we don't FEEL Asian and as funny as this may sound, we FORGET that we are Asian.


Since coming to Thailand we have felt more Asian than ever as we "blend in" and have people speak to us in Thai, as we get offered the Thai menus at restaurants, as we have people laugh at us when we say, "Poot pasaht Thai mai dai" (please forgive me spelling any of you Thai speakers), and as we have people look at us expectantly when we're surrounded by farong-looking people... but it's really those farong-looking like people that speak Thai better than us!


This weekend at the 2009 ICS International Day, we decided to embrace our Asian-ness. There were booths representing the many nationalities at our school. Each booth had information about the country, a game of some sort, clothing, and food. Essentially, it was like the Festival of Nations in MN, except on a much smaller scale. We went back to our Korean roots, had both of our Korean and American names written in Korean for us, dressed up in the traditional hanbok, and took some very typical Asian pictures. Holly even got a fake Asian mole. Too bad she didn't get any fake hairs to grow out of the thing. [hahaha]


In a sense, being Asian, or even pretending to be Asian has become more of a running joke for us than anything else, but it's fun none-the-less, and even more fun to have a friend that understands what it really is like to be a coconut.