Out of Home

There are a lot of places and activities for socializing and enjoying with people in every country. I lived in Hong Kong for sixteen years. Hong Kong is a small city in China, but it has almost everything. When I was still living in Hong Kong, I liked to eat, play, and talk to my friends. People in Hong Kong like to enjoy food with their friends because Hong Kong has a lot of great food. Additionally, the best sport to play and socialize with friends in China is badminton. It is a famous sport in China. Besides that, everyone in Hong Kong uses Cantonese to communicate instead of Mandarin. However, after I came to the United States, everything changed. The feeling I have when hanging out with friends in Chicago is different, and it has made me unwilling to go out with my friends.

            The best place for me to enjoy foods with my friends is a Cantonese restaurant, which is a type of Chinese restaurant from Southern China and famous in Hong Kong. It is a place where I can enjoy dim sum and typical Chinese tea with my friends. Therefore, the first thing I had done in Chicago was go to the Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown. However, the foods in the restaurant are just eye candy, most of it tastes differently from what I had tasted in Hong Kong. Also, the Cantonese restaurants I have tried are mixed with America style and culture. For example, the tea is mixed with sugar, and some of the foods are not fresh. These components make me unable to enjoy the dim sum and tea with my friends. In addition, one of the famous drinks in China, bubble tea, is different too. It tastes so much sweeter here in the U.S. Therefore, I cannot really enjoy it with my friends. It does not fulfill my expectation in socializing, so I am lacking interest to go out with my friends in Chicago.

            I am also a badminton player, and in Hong Kong, it was part of my weekly routine. It is a popular sport that everyone can play. Therefore, I like playing and having fun in badminton with my friends. However, badminton is not well known in Chicago. There are only a few badminton courts in this city. I have been searching for badminton court in Chicago, but I only found very few places for me to play badminton with my friends. Most of the places only allow people to play it in certain days, usually one day in a week. Furthermore, there are very few lessons for badminton, some school do not even have a badminton court in the gym. It shows me that Chicago does not care about badminton. Although a church in Chinatown let me play badminton every Monday at 7pm to 10pm, it is not the same feeling I had in Hong Kong.

            Moreover, Chicago is a place that has many Chinese people that come from different city in China. My communication with other Chinese people is different from Hong Kong. Since some people that come from different cities of China have their own vernacular and local culture, my conversation between them would cause some awkwardness. For example, a Chinese person that can speak Cantonese, but not from Hong Kong, might not understand some native words that I use in Hong Kong. Because of this, I cannot share some funny things with my friends. Since I lived in Hong Kong for sixteen years, some things that I say can only understand by Hong Kong dwellers. Also, sometimes I might not understand what they have said in Mandarin. Although there are many Chinese immigrants, it is very hard to find a person that I can talk comfortably. Since the things I can talk about are limited, my communication is not enjoyable.

            Since I came to Chicago, I have not enjoyed socializing with my friends. Even though Chicago is much larger and has more places to go than in Hong Kong, I cannot enjoy so much with my friends. Since I always go back to Hong Kong in the summer, my miss of Hong Kong is very strong. As I came to this city, I was out of my hometown. However, I do not want to go out of my home now. In the future, I would go back and live in Hong Kong, and I would hang out with my friends in there.