Chapter Fifty-Seven: Unexpected Journey (~jinghan)

Exchange? Yeah it was supposed to be a journey about the challenges of living on my own for the first time, about discovering American culture, I would even way it was supposed to be about interacting with other international students*. I never came here looking for a spiritual journey – surely not in California the home of Hollywood and LA? Well here’s what happened:

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“Oh hi, I’m an international student, there’s an orientation bowling activity?”

“Yeah! Welcome!” says the guy sitting behind a trestle table outside the on campus (?!!) bowling centre, “it’ll cost you $5.”

Oh. Should I go? Or should I go back to my dorm drop off all the fliers that have been given to me and go to another event later in the evening? Five whole american dollars! Gee stop being such a stinge, jinghan. It’s $5 and it’s a long walk to my dorm, just go. So I head in.

I’m disappointed. The place is pretty empty at this point except for some student volunteers. So much for getting to know other international students.

“Hey! Are you an international student?”

She is very cheerful asian girl and I can’t help reflecting back the same level of energy even though I am contemplating whether it is a big loss to have paid $5 and still head back to my dorm without bowling. “Yeah!”

“Where are you from?”

“Australia. What about you?”

“Oh that is so cool! I’m Korean but I grew up in China!”

“So when did you arrive here?”

“Ten years ago!”

I don’t think this was exactly what I mean when I asked her where she was from, but it was a good place to start conversation – though usually I applied it to international students. (A little awkward, but manageable, when they’re from a country you haven’t heard of and/or can’t pronounce.) She was one of the student volunteers, but enthusiastically join in with a group of us to play a game of bowling.

“Where are you living?” She asks me between bowls.

“I’ll be moving into an apartment near Save Mart.”

“Oh there’s a Quickies there, they have pretty good Tapioca.”

“What’s Tapioca?”

“You haven’t had TAPIOCA before?” She looks at me in horror.

“What is it?”

“I have to take you! What’s your number?”

“Uh here… So what is it?”

“Are you doing anything tomorrow afternoon?”

“Not really no. What is Tapioca?”

“Oh it’s like chilled milk tea with tapioca balls in it.”

“Like pearls?”

“Yeah pearls!”

“Ah, yeah I’ve had something like that before, there’s a place that sells it on our campus in Melbourne actually. We call it bubble tea.”

“Yeah, tapioca is another name for bubble tea! Okay, where are you staying? I can pick you up after I finish work at 1pm…”

Not quite as exciting as trying something new, but apparently the fact that I’ve had bubble tea before does not detract from the plans to go have bubble tea- I mean: tapioca. Why a senior-year student wanted to take me, lowly exchange student who had barely been in the country for a week out for Tapioca was a mystery to me, but heck! I’m there.

So that’s how it started. (Don’t worry I haven’t forgotten the spiritual journey part, it’s coming.) I introduced her to the glory of Tim Tams and met her other friend, and introduced both of them to Moosey who gladly accepted all the gushing over him. (Gee, his ego is all puffed up now.) And when I had no clue who might also be going to the football game (of the American variety) I asked her and she invited me along.

Now at the end of the last chapter about my going to the football game I said that I ended up going to play board games? Well, yes, instead of watching Davis win the football game I went to play board games with this girl and her friends. To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what “board games” entailed when I agreed to go with them. (Is this what American students do at each other’s houses in their free time?) but it turned out it was a christian fellowship student club organising an event to welcome new students to UC Davis. So I spent the evening miming out words as “flabby” and “square dance” while my team mates tried to guess the words.

What got me interested was not (although fun) the board games, but how open and friendly the people were. I had spent the previous week hanging out with other international students and exchange students. (In hindsight) there had been this energy-intensive tension in the air, perhaps a product of the uncertainty of trying to establish social cohesion around the questions “where do you come from?”, “what do you study?”, “when did you arrive in Davis?” and subconsciously “Do I seem cool? Please say yes.” At board games night, admittedly, the same first three questions were also asked, but the subconscious message seemed to be more, “Hi, welcome to Davis. We want to know who you are.” In fact, there wasn’t even an underlying “join our club! Oh please join our club!” that seems to pervade Melbourne University’s orientation week activities.

And so I (willingly and voluntarily) signed their club register and went to some of their other social activities, enjoyed myself and slowly went to less of the international student social activities. Sure someone had mentioned to me, “this is our christian fellowship,” but it still surprised me when someone asked me “have you been to church before?”

No one in Australia has ever asked me this. Well almost no one, but my point is that my general impression has been that Australians are not particularly open or comfortable talking about religion. So hold tight, here’s my story: I come from an agnostic background, but after six years of being at a Catholic high school, I had started to steal bits of religion from school to peruse in my own perspective on life. Not all of it, I filtered out a lot of the “Jesus is our salvation…” parts, but I – you could say – made my own individual connection with my own personal sense of God.

After graduating from the Catholic school and going to Uni, there wasn’t quite so much religion being thrown about me, and most of the time I didn’t feel a loss. Perhaps once, on a Wednesday, I saw someone on the train with ash on her forehead and feel a little twinge of nostalgia but nothing more. And so with nothing but selective religious stealings in my purse and a good impression of the people involved with the christian fellowship, I went to church on a Sunday, in a non-school setting, for the first time in my life.

All because some american girl asked me out to Tapioca.

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*yeah, no offence, but Melbounre University needs to up their game when it comes to integrating international students – more on that in another post