World Cafe, friend of my own

Today I finally get myself to attend the World Cafe event hosted by the Dashew center, ie. the international student center of UCLA. Even before I got myself a first cup of coffee, I met someone that clicked! Though arriving late, we chatted even after the event ended and promise we'll definitely hangout sometime.

---photo from Dashew website---

After coming here for ten month now, most of the people I know are of my husband's friend, who are mainly engineers. With no negative feeling or prejudice about engineers, as my husband is one of them, I feel they see me as "the wife of xx", instead of an individual person. This is a new feeling to me. Although me and my husband dated for almost 10 years, we were in a long distance relationship and did not have much common friends.

Over the years, we tried to visit each other and get to know each others' friends. However, it's difficult to become friends with them as we'll have very weak link to stay connected. Still, it is an interesting experience when I finally meet his friends after hearing stories about the parties and outings they have been out together. Though the stories he told me, I often try to imagine how they look like based on the personality, the then my boyfriend, had described. After finally being able to meet them, I often said to my husband, "oh, he looks nothing like what I have imagined". My husband would laughed and teased me thinking, so how "should" he/she look like. Ha, yes, how should he look like what I had imagined him to be?



I guess it is like reading a novel and one day seeing it filmed onto the big screen. And you just have this feeling that, no, that's not how I think Harry Potter should look like! Usually you then feel either feel that it had ruin the whole thing or then you came to see it in a different perspective. For me, the shock came first and later came the acceptance. Funny, isn't it?

So, yes back to today's event, I feel I finally made a friend of my own and that feels great! Today, I am seen as a individual (though you can never avoid the part there they ask you why you are here in LA). Having similar experience really helped when I met this friend today. Both from Taiwan, speaks Chinese, but we kept our conversation in English to insure that others have a chance to cut in. Both of us lived in Europe before coming to Los Angeles, and we believed that is the main source of disappointment. Despite the weather, California is nothing like Europe. We both missed European city's atmosphere and it's compactness. To us, Los Angeles is a city difficult to enjoy. Plain in a way like water to wine. We enjoy cities that we can wonder around and finding surprises just around the corner, not blocks and blocks that are miles away. To me, being in a city like Utrecht, being lost can be an enjoyable experience. I wouldn't feel the say way about Los Angeles.

Sharing these common feeling, we quickly connect and started sharing more of other aspects and gradually getting to know each other. It's wonderful to meet new friends and to make friends of my own. I have always feel that it's a blessing to meet someone who I'd like to share more of my life with.