A Hmong Among Us

There is one redeeming class to my spring lineup. A sketching class which is more about how to see and understand the world than how to draw it. Highly recommended by everyone who's taken it, it seems like a great class, although it will take time and effort. It is being taught by a young architect who works at Will Bruder's office, and interestingly, it contains two grad students who went to Buenos Aires with me, my girlfriend Saori, my 3rd year roommate Salvador, and a friend of mine who dropped out of upper division. It is the one class that I'm really going to enjoy I think.

Last night, Saori took me a house party with a bunch of her friends. It was a surreal experience, where the atmosphere and activities were the same as any typical ASU house party, except the majority of the people there were Japanese. If I heard English spoken at all, it was typically a Japanese person talking to Taiwanese, who also had a huge presence at the party. I was surprised at how well I fit in to the party, but these guys are mostly third culture, or expat people anyway, and my basic mandarin Chinese helped me start some conversations. The surreal elements: the birthday boy bringing in a huge platter of sushi on a wooden bridge platter, shouts of GanPei! in the kitchen, and this random Hmong guy circulating around the group. He was an animation major, and privately confided that he thought that he was the only Hmong in Arizona.