Reasons Why I Would ET …
10 Dec 2008 Leave a Comment
If I were to ET (early termination) it would be because of the following reasons:
1. the endless “chinoise and japonaise” questions/comments. I’m rather sick of people asking me whether I’m Chinese or Japanese and then dwelling on the fact that I have Asian features and couldn’t possibly be “American”. It has not bothered me for a while now (since I get it every single day – at least once) but in the last weeks I’ve been really irritated by it. A few examples that sticks out in my head are: one of our GMC lycee girls pointing to various Asian girls in some magazine and asking if it was me and then laughing about it, some random guy asking if I was Japanese and then bowing to me, and random kids yelling “Jackie Chan” at me. It really just annoys the shit out of me because it never stops. Furthermore, they just don’t understand that just because I have Asian features doesn’t mean that I’m from China or Japan. Sometimes it’s not even worth it to try to explain that I’m “American” but my family is from Laos, because even those that are educated do not get it. Anyways, it’s just really frustrating to have to deal with the every single day – sometimes more than once a day. I wished the Peace Corps did a better job of helping us deal with these issues. I tried to find out as much as I can about other Asian-Americans’ experiences prior to coming here (since one of my professor had told me that there was a general backlash against Chinese/Asians in West Africa) but Peace Corps never connected me with an Asian-American volunteer.
2. kids. I really dislike the kids in this country. A few of them are nice enough, but most of them are horrible. They love to harass us – primarily by throwing rocks at us. How great is that? I don’t know if I ever want to have kids after living here. But I am happy to say that a couple of months ago I chased a kid down a street for pinching my butt. He got a pretty good smacking by some guy at the end of the street. It was pretty funny and totally worth it.
But don’t worry. I’m not going to ET anytime soon. Even though there are some difficult times, I’m enjoying it for the most part. I just have to figure out ways to tackle these issues. One of my sitemates suggested that we do a sensitivity training – which could be really useful.
