Blending In- Jessie

 Most people will agree that teenage years are especially rough times in a person's life. One important skill as a teen is to be able to blend in. This proves quite difficult when:

a. You are adopted and look nothing like you parents  

and 

b. You are the only Chinese-American kid in your grade and one of two Chinese kids in your high school. 

Yes, so let's face it. There is no way I'm gonna ever blend in. Maybe I should get Peeta to help me work on my camouflaging techniques. lol.  Sometimes I do wish that there were more Asians at my school. But I've become comfortable being among the minority. I'm cool with that, it's been like that since my pre-school days. It's really not a big deal. 

If you read the last post I said that I just got back from an exchange program in Beijing. One thing that was absolutely fantastic was finally blending in. I went with my school group, so we stuck out like sore thumbs when I was with them. Half of the girls had golden blonde locks, and we even had a red head on board. Not to mention we also had a football player and a basketball player, both of them towered over the Chinese. Most of the time, however, I was walking through Beijing with my lovely host sister Shi Yue. When I was with her, I blended in. American tourists didn't stare at me. I was just one of the 1.3 billion Chinese locals the tourists had to navigate around. Chinese people didn't stare at me , I looked like the other 1.3 billion Chinese people.  People even asked me things in Chinese. A Chinese man asked me in Mandarin to take a picture of him on the great wall. I said yes in Mandarin and counted in Chinese awkwardly, it was the first time I had taken a picture in mandarin. It was wonderful to just be part of the massive sea of black hair and almond shaped eyes. It was nice to be in the overwhelming majority rather than the small minority. 

- Jess