Image Credit: Karen S. Norwalk, CT

I was thirteen when I first moved to Penang, Malaysia. In order to get to Malaysia, I had to cross the border from Hatyai. Thailand. I did not enjoy it at all. Holding my passport and waiting to get stamped was showing my lack of patience and it was a stressful thing in the young age. I went there by my dad’s car which was lucky because I didn’t want to get driven by a driver who I’ve never met before and sit on the same transportation with strangers. When I entered Penang, everything was so new to me. The country, food, people, school, culture, and many things were different and somewhat new to where I was from. Different nationalities and languages were spoken there. Chinese, Indians, Muslims, Koreans, Malaysians, Americans, and many other different groups of nationalities came to live in Penang. Some had those grumpy Squidward faces like the one that comes out in SpongeBob cartoon show. Some people were just glaring at me as if I had done something unpleasant to them.

I attended Dalat School when I was in fourth grade. By God’s grace, I was accepted and passed the test I had to take. This means it was not my very first time to come to Penang but this time was the transition of me and everything around me. My fourth grade year was a nightmare. I did not understand anything that was written or spoken in English. I didn’t understand what the teacher was saying and also my classmates. Every time I had to watch what my friends were doing and imitate them. I could read but sometimes I couldn’t understand what I was reading. I could write but I wasn’t sure if I’d spelled the words correctly. From when the school starts to the very end of school, I felt like there was a furious tornado living and spinning inside my head destroying everything.

I realized that I was probably the only one who lived in a chaotic world.

My parents had to go back to Southern Thailand to do their work as missionaries. I have never lived apart from my parents. I’ve moved and lived in four different Korean dorms. As an MK, I always felt different from all other ordinary Korean students who came to stay in the same dorm. They knew more about Korean culture, language, and lifestyle. This made me an introvert because I knew that I struggled in Korean a lot and I did not want to show my weakness to those Koreans. I really appreciated one dorm out of four dorms. This dorm was more family like; providing delicious food, good environment and the guardians took a nice care of me.

One day, a Korean pastor took me to see Thaipusam. Thaipusam is a Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil Hindus. The people who are involved in Thaipusam has to mortify their own flesh by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with something called vel skewers. It was a gory sight for me to watch these maniac people’s behaviors. I was extremely scared that it gave me goose bumps in and out from my whole body. The place was so crowded with a lot of Indians. It felt like I was in India. Among the crowds, there were people who danced and were drunk so I had to stay avoided from them. I promised to myself that next time I will never come back to these kind of ceremony which I cannot understand a thing.

Those thoughts about people torturing their bodies haunted me at first but now as time went by, I don’t remember what I saw.

As I look back my life in Malaysia, it was when I first experienced life where sometimes I’ve got to do things by myself and learn many new cultures and unique thinking of people from other countries. It was my moment of life which I never want to go back to some situations and some I would love to go back and have done something differently. I have seen the changes in me by learning so much about life and to grow up in maturity while I lived without my parents by my side. Thinking back, it was somewhat hurtful, tired, and hard but in the other hand new positive things also happened while I lived in a place called Penang.

Subscribe

Get Teen Ink’s 48-page monthly print edition. Written by teens since 1989.