I am sitting on my bed while typing this, in my bedroom at the end of the hall, the air is filled with some sad song my host sister is playing on the piano. I have no idea what the composition is, but it's beautiful. Now I have moved to my third host family, and I am half way through my exchange year - it has been a half a year since I saw my parents, my school, my friends, my home country. And there's half a year until I will see them again.

I am staying with a Vietnamese family, they sent their daughter overseas as well - to Switzerland - and I have her bedroom now.

Since I am staying with an asian host family for the first time - it's a different experience- I am having asian dinner every night... and lunch... and breakfast...

I already notice some small differences.. Apparently it's very normal to eat everything with fork and spoon and not use knife.. Frankly, I am bad at that and manage to send my dumplings flying across the room. The first night here they took me to a Korean BBQ, it was alright, but sorta awkward for me. 'Cause I am the kind of awkward type...

Surprisingly both the daughter (they have two) and mother watch Korean drama. When I mentioned I started to watch city hunter, the mother exclaimed WHAT ! IS THERE A NEW CITY HUNTER DRAMA!? Where I had to explain that no I was just watching the old one. But it was amusing to the see excitement on her face.

And then there's a language barrier... Sometimes I can hardly understand what they're saying, not cause I have difficulties with English, but cause their accent is so heavy. They speak Cantonese at times between themselves.

I used to live in the Korea town of Sydney, I swear it was like being in Korea. When you'd go to the shops everything's written in Korean...

I wish I had pictures then I could show you.

You know how I thought I was going to go on exchange to Japan? Probably not... But yeah I'd have to get used to the Asian culture anyway. And honestly, I was quite fascinated by the culture. Whether it was anime, kpop and so on. 

Actually I wanna talk about something I've realized. Australia is very multi cultural especially in the area I live in. The people in my school - almost 80% of them have asian backgrounds, mostly korean. Which I thought to be great before I came here but I've changed my mind.

Most of the korean students only talk korean to each other, or to everyone really, I experienced this guy swearing at a teacher in the school in Korean- of course the teacher couldn't understand. I've found them to be very rude...

If you're not Korean they don't want anything to do with you. Occasionally they will speak english but only when they have to...

In my school we have a term for these people. It's called 'phobs' which means 'fresh of the boat' that implies that they are still living in their home country in their mind and won't integrate into the society and embrace australian culture. This of course is not all of them but a huge amount.

And they are quite boring. 

You want to know what most of the students from my school do? 

Truth be told, they go home straight after school, then get yelled at them by their parents 'cause they have to practice piano, then they play piano, do homework eat dinner, and attend piano lesson. That's basically what they do.

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Update on my observations