CURRENT MISSION

Finding a job, following my dreams and not freaking out about life!! Agh...

ABOUT ME

Honestly, I'm a big fat dork and a bit of a noob at life. I laugh at random moments when I think of something unrelated to conversations - I'm sorry. I jump and clap when I'm happy and love to dance in my own special way. However, I don't like to dance with strange guys who aren't hot... I also cheer very enthusiastically for my sports teams. I'm also a bit of a nerd - well not really, but kind of, if you know what I mean.

I enjoy traveling around the world, seeing new places. I generally have traveled on my own, making my solo trips to Tokyo (I only went to one city in Japan so I just wrote Tokyo), Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. I once had a month-long tour of some of the major cities of Western Europe and I stayed in France for three weeks as a teenager for a school exchange program. I finished university in 2008 and have been abroad since then. I taught English for a year in South Korea and then decided to improve my Mandarin in Beijing for another year.

On a side note, I *really* love cheese!!! I used to tell my students in Seoul that I loved cheese more than I loved men - my Korean co-teacher remembered this little fact. I also enjoy a good glass of wine.

I'm Chinese American. I identify myself as being American before being Chinese. Living in China has taught me that I truly am not Chinese - it is a bit disorienting to be torn between two cultures. While I was in university, I had participated in Asian American organizations at UCLA which explored our biculturality. Yet, it was only until I lived abroad in Seoul and Beijing that I realized there is a distinct difference between Asians and Asian Americans. An annoying question I get asked is why my parent didn't teach me Chinese. The fact is, my speaking Chinese is generally fine - it's just that I don't have fluency when it comes to speaking about more advanced topics in Mandarin. My late father immigrated to America at a rather early age and his first language wasn't Mandarin in the first place. (He spoke Taishan hua and Cantonese). My mother spoke Mandarin. So, they didn't even speak the same language at first. I would get the dialects confused when I was younger. It is a shame that I don't have the bilingual fluency that others may have, but I am making my attempts at becoming better at it. Additionally, I studied French in high school and spoke it reasonably well - but my ability surely has rusted without practice. It has only been until I arrived in China, ironically, that I found some French friends to occasionally practice French with.

I'm hoping to move back to Los Angeles and see how I can develop my future career. Oh - and my dream is to be a prominent Asian American actress back in the US! I realize the chances of that are extremely slim and I had better start getting cracking on pursuing it. I had a talent for acting as a middle school student, somehow neglected it for years - until I began to get involved in amateur expat theater in Seoul and Beijing. I figure that I can afford to spend a year of my life as a starving actress before I abandon my silly dreams and settle down into a stable job.

PHILOSOPHY

Well...my philosophy in life is that I want to have not lived in vain. I don't want to merely live for myself.

Je souhaite ä¸

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I had a great time with CouchSurfing in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest!!

Interests

Acting, writing, baseball, eating good food, learning new things (i.e. new languages, failed attempts at picking up new instruments like the gayageum, janggu and erhu, various forms of martial arts like taekwondo, wushu, various dances like tango and swing), and trying to leave a more positive impression upon people about Americans...

• arts
• writing
• theater
• acting
• dancing
• tango
• dining
• wine
• cheese
• traveling
• cycling
• sports
• baseball
• martial arts
• dialects
• teaching
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies:
Field of Dreams, Infernal Affairs (the Hong Kong original of the Departed), Lord of the Rings, Aladdin

Music:
Korean pop music (Fly to the Sky, 2PM, Big Bang, SNSD)
Linkin Park (don't laugh!)
Mariah Carey
Boyz II Men
Jimmy Eat World
Various other kinds of hip hop

Books:
The Hours
Tuesdays with Morrie
Death of a Salesman

Also, I read the NARUTO manga every week it is released! That's my little bit of nerdom - and it is great.

Teach, Learn, Share

My teaching skills... Well, I guess you already know how to speak English. That's what I actually taught. Beyond that, if you're not native Chinese or one of those 很厉害 white kids that can kick my ass at Chinese, I can probably teach you some Chinese.

What do I want to learn? I want to learn how to salsa I suppose. And maybe how to ride a bike. Families in both China and France have tried to teach me, but I failed. A legion of Norwegian, American, Canadian, and Malaysian also tried to teach me how to ride a bike. But I...have bad balance!

I also did have an interest in learning Russian. German. Remembering French. Practicing my ever fading Korean.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, South Korea, United States

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