“sdfiucxjkhvsodfygislerb”

“Hahahahahaha, you are so stupid abfajborwufbaoglvhiaeofg,” people were talking and laughing around the table.

“Really? That’s really rieiriruzjdshxcvsidlqer! Do you know in this situation it is called afdhisirughseiurin French.”
 

Last summer vacation, my friend Vivien and I went to a remote town in the middle of Thailand to be volunteers. Arrived at the home base—Twin House late at night, we were like thieves when we entered the room assigned to us. According to the manager whose name is Phil, a middle-aged man with a strong Italian or Spanish accent, our roommate was a Dutch girl. After the first peaceful night, we started our days as islands. The schedule of our life was: we did our jobs from morning to afternoon at a place twenty-minute drive from Twin House, and we enjoyed free time back in Twin House. We were not the only people with yellow skin, but we were the only Chinese. The volunteers were mostly college students from Europe and the United States.

“Hey, how are you!” I tried to say hi to a girl with blonde hair next to me; she seemed nice with a large smile on her face.

“Good, you are new here?” She answered quickly with a soft tone.

She was so nice!

“Yes,” I responded joyfully and hoped to have a further conversation. But when I just about to talk, she had already turned around and talked to someone else.

AWKWARD.

Mission “trying to keep a conversation with someone else” failed.
          

And I tried for several times, but all ended up with either in the same way or confused by their quickly switched language Friendly people with “unknown” languages were a big no for me.

Although they said “hi” to us and greeted us, we still felt STRONGLY isolated. They were so different. As a matter of fact, I could not understand their French, Spanish or Dutch at all, and for the first time in my life I didn't feel proud as a Chinese. I would rather be someone who speaks perfect European languages than someone  fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese. Being somehow “isolated,” the only thing we could do was to smile while they were talking. For me, English was like a piece of wood, and I was holding this piece of wood floating on the ocean formed by those unknown languages. English was the only thing that could save me from this vast language-ocean, but it didn't work. After trying so hard to find out the English words hiding behind their own mother tongues, we gave up our naive thought of fitting in and ran away like losers.

Defeated by French, Spanish and Dutch in the battle of Chinese versus European languages, my heart was filled up with emotions. I can’t really tell how I really felt, but the strongest feeling was the disappointment. I was so disappointed. Before this trip, I'd thought of a least a hundred different situations that we may face in here, but I ignore the fact that language would become the biggest obstacle.

Hiding ourselves behind the computer screen, we finally found our comfort zone. “I just love watching movies!” said Vivien. For instance, we found a perfect solution for this palpable isolation, but we soon realized that we were extremely bored after staying in the same position and doing the same thing for the whole night. The first night, we tried to fit in, and we failed. The second night, we tried to watch movies till the end of the world, and we got bored. Desperately wanting something new to do, I could not focus on anything but started to look around in Twin House. All of the sudden, I saw four Asian boys as the same age as us.  I was overwhelmingly happy, but I was too afraid to talk to anyone after the “trauma” caused by those “bird languages” speakers. Therefore, I stepped back and went back to my seat next to Vivien and started to act like I don't care and enjoy our endless movie watching time.

But things started to change when a lizard climbed up to our table and freaked us out. I quickly held up all my belonging and ran to another table in the other side of the room which was right next to those four boys. I tried to continue to focus on my movie while those boys were SUPER distracting! They were playing pokers and yelling all the time. Although they were all Asian, at least from their appearance, they never spoke any Asian language but English, so they were still different. I just wanted to talk to someone other than Vivien. We had already spent nearly all of our time playing our phones, chatting with our friends and watching movies. Why was it so hard to find someone to talk to, or someone friendly, or someone who could speak something that we could understand to talk to? Mumbling some random words sent by my friends through WeChat meaninglessly, someone poked my shoulder with a small stack of poker holding in his hand.

“Hey, you wanna play?”

“Uhh, I… What?” I couldn't even respond to the boy clearly.

“Poker, do you play poker?” the boy asked with a friendly tone and pointed his finger to another boy, “he is leaving, we are short of one.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can play.” I answer quickly, “But I’m with my friend, can she come too?”

“Sure, why not?”

As Vivien and I walked to their table, one boy introduced everyone to us, his name Jason, Leo his brother in blue, Anthony in white and Johnny in black.

“We are playing the Big Two, you guys know this game right?”

“Is 2 the biggest card in the Big Two?” Vivien asked and Jason knocked his head quickly.

“Oh yes we know! It is ??? in Chinese.”

“Choo ta ti?” Leo tried to learn the pronunciation of the word I said. “I can only listen to most of Mandarin and Cantonese, what Chinese do you speak?”

“I speak Mandarin and dialect of my hometown,” Vivien scratched her nose, “she speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese.” We started our conversation while Jason was handing out the cards. But just after one game, all of us found out the Big Two didn't work at all since we had five people in one game. Leo put down his phone and back to the game “How about we just change to another game? Hmmm…Slap?” Poker games are just so international that everyone knows how to play them immediately.  The game Slap began, and the only conversation among us was the number said from person to person in order, we held our breath and focused on the cards placed on the middle of the table.

“Jack!” Just after someone’s word, all the hand slapped on the card.

“Aw! Take off your watch, man! It hurts!”

We switched from the Big Two, to Slap, to Texas Holder, and to Camps, which nearly spent the whole night “fighting” and “lying” in order to win each game. And when the game turned to the Camp, Vivien and me, the master of Mandarin won most of our game because in Camps each group of players had to come up with certain code to drop a hint to their partners in order to win the game. During the game, I constantly spoke with Vivien in Mandarin, or Mandarin mixed with Cantonese which were extremely hard for others to understand, and through our small conversations, we dropped our hint and said our code inadvertently. The fours boys were so angry on our little trick and complained all the time that they lost almost every game. When they were complaining about how hard they should have learned Chinese in their early ages, I felt so proud as being a Chinese, and so proud that I understand the claimed to be one of the hardest languages in the world. I was in a state of euphoria but soon started to regret the thought of hating to be a Chinese speaker surged in my mind the day before. As a matter of fact, I had been trying to hide my Chinese identity, and it was the first time for us to speak in Chinese for the whole day. We talked in English even when Vivien and I were alone. I was lost. Lost in the confusion of languages and lost in loneliness. I was so naive that I thought to give up speaking Chinese can help us to get rid of this “isolation.” I was completely WRONG. Just at that moment, just at the moment when I felt proud of being a Chinese, I was humiliated by myself, by my foolish and shameful behavior.  Games continued and we all had a great time chatting and playing with the boys. When I got back to my room, I started to think about our experience with “unfriendly” people these two day.  Were they just so unfriendly or just because we didn't speak the same language? But we had a great time with those four boys, what was the main cause of such unhappy experience? I just couldn't get it right. After the first night with Leo, Jason, Anthony and Johnny, Vivien and I went to their table to play poker for the next couple of days. As we were getting more and more familiar with each other, getting more understanding of their culture and comparing to ours, I realized that it was not all about the language. More and more people joined our game, the most “violent” player Tim who spent three months as a volunteer in Thailand, always “smashed” our hand with his ring and proud of his “powerful” attack. And Vicky, another German who was not familiar with game and was the number one “victim” of Tim, and another French boy Sebastian would always ran around in bare feet around the room seeking for food and yelling when he lost his games over and over again. I gradually forgot the fact that we were not from the same country or speak the same language, we laughed together, we made fun with each others and sometimes swear in our own mother tongues. The unpleasant moments that bothered us for the first two days faded away and replaced with the truth smiles on everyone’s face.

The precious time I spent with these people who shared different cultural background brought me an understanding of what languages really mean to me. Sometimes languages are so important because they can help you to convey your ideas, and sometimes languages are not so important because people can feel. I was first defeated by languages that I don't understand and reluctant to speak the languages that I was familiar with. As time goes by, I soon realized why those European volunteers always spoke their own mother tongues, it was all the same. After all we were the same, we were just more comfortable with the language we know, we familiar with, and we use most.