Believe it or not I'm not exactly great at everything. My high school physics teacher probably still thinks I'm not good at anything. However, there are definitely some things about myself besides my undying wit. So here comes the question... How is Eric Lipka going to make it in a school that has 30,000 people and speaks a completely different language? Great question.
I have had a few experiences abroad and I've found that I'm pretty good at a few things. The first is figuring out public transportation. I usually figure out the first by getting incredibly lost for about an hour then finding my way back. Which brings me to my second skill, not getting stressed out when I get lost. I know at some point in the capital city of the Jiangxi province that I will get lost. I will get so painfully lost, but it will probably be one of the best experiences while I'm studying abroad because it will help me to figure out the city a little better which will in turn help with my intentional assimilation into the Chinese culture that I have been desiring. My next strength is food. I LOVE food. Not like the people who instagram pictures of all of their meals. I don't put pictures of my food up because I like to treat each meal like an intimate love affair that I don't want anyone else to know about. I am so looking forward to the food while I am in China. I really am looking forward to that because I want to see just how different it is from the Americanized version of Chinese food. While a part of hopes for the streets to be paved with Chinese fried chicken wings, I know that won't be the case. Which brings up the final strength that I hope to discuss which is flexibility. I know that things don't always go the way we expect them to. I worked for a non-profit for a year, and that experience taught me flexibility beyond my wildest dreams.
With all of these strengths you must be saying "Gosh Eric, are you going to have any problems?" Yes... yes I am. I found out last class that I'm a pretty low context person. When I say "pretty low context" I mean I was an outlier for the class. What does that mean about me? Well I tend to have very direct conversations with people. I don't really like conversations that don't get to the point that I'm trying to get at. This doesn't mean I don't occasionally dive into a significant conversation, but it's only really when I want to. I'm bad at maintaining a large number of friends, so I usually only have a small number of friends that I'm really close to that know a lot about me and then my family. This makes me nervous because China was very high on the high context culture, but I'm flexible. I can put on my high context pants and give it all a shot. Because it is happening.
There is one other thing that I have been a little nervous on that I encountered in Ghana. In Ghana tattoos are incredibly rare and there was a stigma on people that had them. I'm very proud of my tattoos and they are very visible. I'm also very sensitive about them and I really don't like situations where I have to cover them up because of what they stand for to me. In doing some research tattoos have become a little more common in China, but there is still a pretty large stigma towards them. That is something about America that I will be bringing on my trip. In this country, whether my parents wanted to hear it or not, it is not the strangest concept to see people with very visible tattoos. A lot of my friends my age have at least one. However, that doesn't seem to be the case in China, and I am worried about how being a white, male, tattooed American will impact my time in China.
There are things I am worried about and other things that I am so excited for, and either way I will find myself exercising another one of my strengths. Jumping in. Feet first and ready to take on a brand new experience.
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