Illustration by Meghan Sim

You are 15.

You are sent to the United States by your mother. You land in an unfamiliar country by yourself.

You wait for the assigned driver by the terminal in the airport alone.

By the line for customs, you see different languages saying, “Hello.”

“你好!” in your mother language is included, 

but some of the other languages you have never seen.

You are delivered to the homestay by the driver.

The first interactions outside of the airport you have with the country are: the car crossing through a tunnel under the water, driving onto the highway, and passing traffic lights.

The traffic lights are the same as they are in China.

Some of the signs have green backgrounds and white words, but the words are in English —

which are different from the Chinese characters you’ve seen in your home country.

You are living with someone who has no blood relationship to you.

You pay for your residence with “homestay parents” at what is called a “homestay” because you are not an adult and need a guardian for your high school in a foreign country. 

Your homestay parents are an old couple in their 60s, but they still go to work in the early morning on weekdays.

You know that in China, men retire at 60, and women retire at 55, so this fact amazes you.

Your homestay parents never ask about how you feel, what you are doing in school, or your dreams.

They don’t care because you are not their relative; they don’t pay attention because they are busy.

They even walk into your room without your permission while you are at school and tell you they must ensure you don’t destroy anything in their house.

You treasure the time you talk on the phone with your parents in China, but there is a 13-hour time difference, and they are also busy at work.

You look at your classmates at school, who always have their parents or relatives to pick them up after class.

Because you must walk to the T station, it takes you one hour to commute home — 

to the home where nobody speaks your mother language.

You are a teenager.

In China, your parents made you a hot meal every day before and after work: noodles, meat buns, rice, seafood, and vegetables,

everything your Chinese stomach would love to have.

But here in this country what you have is: pastas and pizzas with tons of cheese, hamburgers with oily meats and onions inside, and sometimes, 

cold chicken breasts, cooked a day before you have them. 

You liked those foods in China because you seldom had a chance to eat them.

However, you are homesick, and you miss food from your culture. 

You don’t know how to cook.

But you are tired of learning to order a Subway sandwich, so you start reading Chinese food recipes

until you realize you are not allowed to cook in your homestay.

You were a person who liked to make friends when you were in China.

After coming here, you wanted to continue to do so. 

But you realize that your proudly spoken English needs to be better for your peers and classmates to understand you.

The question you hear the most is, “What do you mean?” 

You are tired of constantly explaining yourself, and your peers are tired of knowing you only through extra explanations. 

You seem to play well with your classmates in your basketball club, but no one plays with you on their own initiative

unless the coach asks them to do so.

You try to make friends with the international students who live in the United States like you do.

They are from South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan, and some are from China.

You confidently speak English in groups of people who speak multiple languages, and more comfortably speak Chinese in groups of people who only speak Chinese —

but there are only a few international students at your high school. 

One day, you argue with one of the Chinese students at your school.

It is just a tiny thing on a simple math question in calculus. 

Even though you apologize, the next day, all the Chinese students in your school refuse to talk to you. 

You make a phone call to your mother to ask for help,

but she asks, “我送你来美国不是让你每天说中文的。” (Translation: Why don’t you make local friends and try to get into the American culture?) 

You are confident with your English and your study skills,

but the exams and requirements for college applications are totally different from what you have learned for 15 years in China.

The classes at school are also different.

Though you are confident in your English skills, using English in daily work, life, and study is different than using English as your academic language. 

Immediately doing 40 pages of English reading per week is difficult. 

Meanwhile, you are still curious about why your classmates can use the bathroom during class time without asking permission from teachers.

You see your peers, including those international students, finishing their homework earlier than you and adapting to life better,

but you are afraid to ask, and no one offers to help.

The international students in your school start to prepare for college applications when they are juniors in high school.

Most of the national students in your school start to do so once they are almost seniors.

You need to figure out when to start, and schoolwork takes almost all of your time. 

You were a top student in China and confident in your achievements, 

but after coming to this country, you are average and even the worst in your class. 

You realize that you want to become a writer when you are in your application season,

but you don’t know if you can write stories and essays well in English.

You start to doubt yourself and for the rest of your high school life you question: your health, your schoolwork, and how to be a better person. 

You end your high school life without any achievements,

but with depression and no friends. 

At least, luckily, with a college offer —

even if it is not your favorite one.

You see your middle school classmates from China, who want to come to the United States for college, planning to attend top schools. 

They are excited to come to this country, and some ask you through social media what they need to do to prepare to come here.

They tell you they are jealous of you for living in this country for many years. After all, you were: living alone, getting away from your parents, having Western food every day, making friends worldwide, and learning in an English environment.