My Foreign Friends

I have many foreign friends, and  some bring me happiness while some make me gloomy or headache, but  mostly I have fun with them. Here I want to share some with you:

With my vietnamese friend:

I have kept very close relationship with one vietnamese friend 3 years since we entered our university. Every semester we compete with each other to see whose GPA will be higher especially when we studied in the same section, so my teacher was headaced a little when she trained us.  Apart from being rival, we are good friend and alo help each other whenever each of us encounter difficulties.

Few days ago we had a short conversation, and she suddenly said,

" I hate China"

" why?"

" Your country always wants to take over our land....."

" Hey, come one! I am Chinese! "

" My sister also donated money for our government"

"what?"

" TO buy weapon, to against your country"

....No words needed to be spoken at that time....-_-

Later I sent her MSG. I told her, " I hope there is no war between us "

With my Indian friend:

I have an indian friend, and she is so nice to me . We sat together when we studied together. Once, when my teacher analyzed one case and said, " .....it is easy to see that few years later there must be an extreme competition between China and India.....China and India will be opponent in term of economics " Some friends around us laughed and looked at us, which confused our teacher. She asked, " what's happen?"

" Nothing teacher. Here, just one Chinese and one Indian sit together"

With my Japanese friends

I have never thought that I would make friend with Japanese until I did.  I can't believe! In China, my family never use any Japanses products, and my grandfather will never forgive any Japanese, because he was arrested by Japanese soilder before.....all are related to history, here, I should skip. Until now I dare not to tell him that I have Japanese friends.

However, I really appreciate Japanses' spirits in terms of cooperation, unity and self-discipline, etc. I like to do group work with Japanese because they are punctual, responsible, serious and careful with what they are doing. When I did psychological group work with 1 Japanese, 1 Chinese, 4 Thai, I was only satisfied with the work that Japanses friend had done. It was very difficult to work with friends with different background, so as a group leader, I always forced them and myself to follow some rules. Only I and my Japanse friend, Haruki, could follow rules and plan strictly.

Anyway, some Japanses become my good friend now.

With my Thai friends

Most of my Thai friends are very kind to me, and I like them. When they need me, I will be with them; when I encounter dificulties, they help me. I think I am a lucky person, because many of them care of me. However, even though I have stayed in Thailand more than 3 years, I still find that sometimes it is difficult to communicate with my Thai friends. Most of them say " Yes/ it doen't matter/ ok/..." very often, so I don't know what they really want.  I still remembered what happened one year ago.

I went out for dinner with one Thai friend. When we got menu, I asked ,

" what would you like to have for dinner?"

" anything is ok to me"

"really? So what do you like most? "

" anything I can eat..."

" are you sure?"

" yes"

Then I order SOM-DAM, fried fish, and other food.

The result was: I was the person who finished 80% of that dinner....-_-

I don't demand more from my Thai friends.  I only want them to be frank or direct, but I think it is difficult... so now I learn to adjust myself.

With my German friend

I still remembered what happened when I had an appointment with my German teacher in Shanghai. We made an appointment at 12, but I was late 10 minutes. When I reached the place that we should meet, my teacher was not there. Later I called him, and he told me, " You are late. This is the class I need to teach you: being punctual is the way you show your respect to others."  From then on, I have followed my teacher's words.

2 years ago, I had an appointment with one German friend  at 4 pm . I reached the place first at 3:45pm, but he came at 4:30. I told him,

" hi, you are late!"

" be patient..."

" Your German people are very punctual"

" I am in Thailand now"

.......-_-.........

Anyhow I like my friends. Just have fun with my memory...