Anew

What if you just packed up everything and went somewhere new where you didn't know a single person?  Would you keep to yourself?  Would you want to make a lot of new friends or just a few?  What would it be like to just go somewhere totally new, and have everybody meet have nothing to go on for their impression of you?

I've always wondered those kinds of things, and I'm almost at the halfway mark, three months, and I've found out a bit.

It's different.

At home, almost everybody I meet has something to go on.  "This is Amanda, and she's from Washington, where it's rainy and cold."  See and just from being from Washington you'd probably think "She probably doesn't mind rain, and she probably has a few flannel shirts, and I wonder if she likes Owl City."  But here people might hear I'm from Washington, but besides the few people here that are from the place, they don't know what on earth being from Washington says about me, because they have never been there.

Here people have no idea who my family is.  They don't know my parents, or my sister, they don't know my pets.  They have nothing to go by.  It's kinda cool, but weird as well, to have people just see me and nothing else.  It's like starting fresh.  But it's also strange to have people not know things about you that I've always just kinda expected people to know.

It's just so weird having to explain some things.  Like when I say something really off the wall, some people still act surprised!  Or when they find out I have played a lot of interments, not just piano.  I'm always thinking "Duh, I'm a Stangland.  We all play like at least five."  But people here have no idea!  They all think I'm outgoing, because they haven't seen me be painfully shy during my younger years.  They don't meet my more outgoing sister, so they have nothing to compare me to.  Or I keep saying these inside jokes everybody knows back home, and people here just give me the strangest look!  Super weird.

But you know what?  It'll probably be super weird going back home too, because I'll be used to living here, (Or soon, in China!) and I'll probably have picked up all sorts of little traits that I'll bring back.  Like I know there'll probably be times where somebody will say something and I'll do that YWAM finger-clicking-flick thing or shout SHABBA!  Or say COMPROMISE to everything as a joke.  My jokes and habits have changed.  I think I've only made a "that's what she said" joke about two or three times since I've been here.  Well, at least out loud...