please do not read while operating heavy machinery

herro everybodeh! as i write this, i'm watching a documentary about the great wall of china on discovery travel and eating a bowl of ramen (with chopsticks because i am awesome). you can't make this stuff up. that is just how asian i am. as you should already know, my blog partner and i are very asian people. so asian in fact, that we look asian. and act asian. and often (if you're lucky enough to partake in it), speak asian. at the very least we have very authentic asian accents. and this summer, just to prove how asian we are, we're going to be going to asia. but because life is never rabbits and rainbows and marshmellows and leprechauns, we won't be going to countries we know really, really well (read: malaysia and the phillippines) - we're headed to japan and china. like badasses.

I suppose you're wondering why we started and are now striving to maintain this peculiar blog. Why "strive"? It's a word that could describe the painful and countless hours that both of us have devoted to html-formatting, blogspot-cursing, and google-searching. Why "peculiar"? Because as the fruit of labor by two mentally unstable post-pubescent girls, there's no other formal-sounding word for it. But to answer your question: Because. We. Are. Studying. Abroad. IN ASIA.

We are great propagators of the Asian culture, being Asian. We are both currently studying Asian languages, in addition to our own native language that is also Asian. And we are both aware of how ironic it is that both of us, having lived in Asia for most of our Asian lives, are studying abroad in Asia. (Don't try to count the number of times we say Asia in this blog entry. Unless you plan on using Microsoft Word or something. But that would be cheating.)

we are very aware of the fact that the title of the blog makes little sense to you. it probably makes zero sense to you. unless you get puns. because we are very punny people. hoho. get it? punny? okay. i'll stop now. forgive me if i sound like i'm rambling and making stuff up as i go. because i totally am. i digress.

Let's analyze this further. Both of us, being so Asian, aren't as extremely Asian as most people would assume us to be. We both think in English, we both dream in English, we both fantasize in English (assuming we fantasize, and assuming its with white men...or women), and we both communicate in English 95% of the time. We know how to order fast food FAST (which is the point of these things), though we do sometimes use our coupons. We have adapted to the American culture so much so that we can write essays on our music tastes, knowledge of pop culture, and love for boy bands.

i'm here to explain the title of our blog to you. i will do it as well as i possibly can, which may (or may not) be well at all, because we don't really know what it means. but i will say - we chose "southeast" because will, our families and backgrounds are from southeast asia. and because we're going to school in the university of arkansas, fayetteville, which is located in the southeastern region of the united states. yep. i'm getting better at this whole geography thing. though i did learn like, a few days ago that rhode island isn't really an island. go figure.

This blog shall then focus on our re-adaptation to the Asian culture. Think about it. Us two Asian girls have been educated halfway through our undergraduate careers in the South -- the geographical region of the United States where liberalism and conservatism, and left-wing and right-wing politics will certainly clash on a college campus, a campus that emphasizes diversity and equality in a state that has a history of infamous discrimination--where these ideals, political criticisms, and beliefs have surrounded us and engulfed us so intensively that our way of thinking has been influenced, especially since we both came from conservative Asian backgrounds. We've both managed to live in two worlds, having put one aside in order to survive in another. But when we are faced with a short-term commitment to integrate into the culture that we have, for a while, forgotten to manipulate, the question is not whether can we do it, but will we? In our case, "re-adaptation" becomes both complicated and simple.

my blog partner and i have spent (quite literally) an equal amount of time in asia as we have in america, and so, to say that we suffer from identity crises is an understatement. our daily struggles include: do we leave the shoes on when we enter houses?, do we want an order of burgers and fries or dumplings and fried rice?, when annoyed do we flip people off or curse at them in every asian language we know? you know - the usual. but that's in america.

These soul-searching and individual-defining thoughts will probably not make it to this blog. They will probably stay in our well-abused minds, having been smoked out of juice after hours of intensive language lecture and culture-ization (Yes, my English does fail at times). No, this blog is for our entertainment (and therefore, yours as well). We aim to log our adventures, our secret romances, our coup-de-tats (oh, what little French I know), and our multi-language ramblings on this very domain. We shall have pictures, and multi-media content of food, sushi, sashimi, rice pastries, dumplings, ramen, sushi, sushi, REAL RICE, sushi, dim sum, wonton, non-buffet Chinese food, dim sum, and sushi! We shall gloriously triumph over the fact that we are going to study abroad for only a summer by creating havoc and mayhem all over Nagoya/Beijing with our extremely Asian selves. We shall take pictures with our newly-made friends using our expertly made peace signs. And we shall be the envy of all. Cue sinister laugh.

and because we're asian, going to asia, to learn about brand new asian cultures and languages, we are aware of the fact that we will probably be judged as asians by asians. so that's why we plan on shedding our western twinkiness while we're there - western preconceptions and ideas, opinions and perspectives, food preferences and accents, and our dependency on walmart (though one of us will be covered in beijing). in a sense, we'll be attempting to go in cognito (that's the plan anyway) in asia, doing our best to fit in and get in touch with our inner asian there. the mission? to assimilate our southern selves into the culture and learn everything we can while we're there. like secret asian agents. agiants, if you will. pause for effect.

told you we were punny.