Other countries have always fascinated me, be it anywhere from France to China to (who would’ve guessed?) Taiwan. Our family loves to travel, and I have often glanced up from the novel I’m currently reading (I’m a complete bookworm) and found myself in all corners of the world: Europe, Asia, and South America, to mention a few. But those trips were all short vacations, nothing longer than a month. Though I’ve always fantasized about living abroad, my daydreams always took place far in the future somewhere during or following my college years. So I can’t say I ever imagined living long-term anywhere but the United States until I was much older, which is why I was so shocked when my parents asked Clifford and I how we would feel about moving to Taiwan for a year.
In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. When my brother and I were younger, my parents had often talked about living somewhere in China for a while to improve our Mandarin. Clifford and I grew up speaking Mandarin with our mom, who was born in Taiwan, and until third grade we took part in the Mandarin-immersion program at our school. After that, we went to a Mandarin program on the weekends, and later took lessons from a tutor. So I can speak Mandarin pretty well, but my reading and writing falls somewhere around a fourth grade level. My parents thought living abroad was a good way to improve these skills, but I guess I never really took them all that seriously, being so young at the time. We certainly have our fair share of visits to China, and even one to Taiwan, under our belts, but I definitely didn’t expect to be moving to one of those countries.
Unlike Clifford, I was… fairly upset, to say the least, when my parents first brought it up. In fact, for several months, I refused to even talk about moving whenever my parents mentioned the subject. I didn’t want to think about leaving all my friends behind for an entire year, or, even worse, being a grade behind everyone when I returned to the United States. Over time, though, I came to be as excited about the prospect of moving as the rest of the family. I had been on the brink of relenting for a while, but I think the moment I finally made the decision was the one following a remark made by Ms. McGourty, my school counselor in the US, when I discussed with her the possibility of moving: “Think about it like this. Could you forgive yourself if you didn’t take this opportunity?” I thought about that for a split second, then came to my conclusion: no, I couldn’t. In that split second, several things were going through my mind, one of which was what I talked about at the beginning of this post. I love adventure. I love the thought of the big, wide world out there, just waiting for me to explore it. And I love all the diverse cultures, people, languages and religions that come with it. In that moment, I knew this was one chance I simply couldn’t waste.
