My Life Story (Part 7): Fitting In

The hardest part about moving to some place new is fitting in, adapting to one's environments.  But being the person I am, I care and think too much, and don't like "intruding".  From my perspective, everyone already had their own friend circles, whether it was from their high school days, or from early college days, since I didn't go out to try to meet people until a few weeks/months into the semester.  Luckily through basketball, I found a few people to ball with on a more regular basis, and eventually latched on with their friend group.

With sophomore year roommates
and roommate gf, with Wong Fu

This group consisted of the friend I balled with, his roommate, his roommate's girlfriend, the girlfriend's roommate, a bboy, and on occasion my temporary roommate haha.  It was an interesting group, not gonna lie.  I ended up rooming with the bball friend and his roommate the next year, while the three girls ended up living together (I think, don't remember).  Lol okay, kind of irrelevant to the story.  Let's move on.



I just remembered that last post I ended on the notion of me joining the Asian American Association (AAA) and the Taiwanese American Students Club (TASC).  Funny story about that actually.  In the beginning of the semester, me and friends A and B decided to go check out the AAA bbq event to join and meet people.  We were told it was hosted in Illini Grove, so we walked across the street to the area.  We found a group of people and started eating and conversing with them.  Honestly, I didn't know if there was something wrong with my English or my understanding of English, but I could NOT understand what these people were saying most of the time.  Two possibilities came to mind: 1) people in the Midwest absolutely could NOT speak English, or 2) these guys were SOOOOO Asian that they couldn't speak English.  Regardless of which one it was, we decided to not go to any more events lols.

*Side note* I found out towards the end of freshman year (I think) that we ended up going to the wrong barbeque.  That park had multiple spots and we just walked to the first Asian one we saw.  Apparently, we ended up at some Singapore club barbeque LAWLS

ICASP (this is actually from sophomore year cause
I couldn't find a picture from freshman year)

So how did I end up mustering up the courage to try to fit into already established friend groups you ask?  Through going to events that I could relate to and fit in better.  TASC hosts this program once a year (twice a year now) called ICASP, the Illinois Chinese Adopted Student Program.  Here, each person who volunteers to be a "big" gets paired up with a "little".  At this program, the littles are able to learn about their Chinese backgrounds since most of them are adopted and otherwise do not get a chance to.  There's also an adult program that runs

at the same time where the parents learn about their children's backgrounds as well as how to raise them in a way so their culture is not lost and that they aren't as confused.  I signed up to be a big for this event because I saw it as another way to work with children, which I love, and through this I met other people as well.  At this event, many people on the TASC board tried convincing me to run for a board position.

TASC Winning Team Picture

Another event I signed up for is TASC's dodgeball event.  Unfortunately, that year happened to be the last year that TASC hosted the dodgeball tournament.  For those of you who don't know, and that's probably almost everyone haha, I have a pretty sicknasty throwing arm.  When I played baseball in New Jersey, coaches always put me at shortstop or third base because I oftentimes had the strongest and most accurate throwing on the team.  But yeah, at this tournament, I was one of the biggest reasons the TASC team won the tournament :D 

Can you guess which one is me?  Hint: I'm extremely out of place LOL

Although I didn't sleep before the tournament (I have trouble sleeping before competitive events), I still went all out during our games.  I'm pretty sure I nailed the AAA sports chair in the face in one of our games (too bad only below the head shots count xP).  But yeah, I believe I ended up being sore and dysfunctional for a week afterwards since I hadn't thrown in a while haha.  We all went to Perkins to eat afterwards, and later on in the week, TASC had a barcrawl, and I decided to go to get to know the board better since I planned on applying.  The board was so nice.  I will never forget how one of the board members sat with me outside this one bar because I wasn't old enough to get in LOL xD

Pyro me with the bboy

Eventually, I made it onto the TASC board... as the webmaster LMAO.  Haha, it was actually the position I applied for though, cause they needed one and I just wanted to get in.  Plus at the time I was going for a CS minor, so why not?  Hmm, I think that pretty much sums up my freshman year.  I can't think of anything else... hmm... well, I guess that'll sum up tonight's post then xD  Thanks for reading!  =D  Keep it real folks, :P ace