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In Chinese, my name means "Smart Firefly." Now why did my mother think me so strange, as to call me a bug with a glowing butt, I don't know. But in America, it gives me distinction. So I'm pretty satisfied with it.
However, one also learns quickly, the shorter a foreign name is, the less likely people fumble over it. Thus, I've been called "Wai" since elementary school. At home though, my family calls me something like "Little Girl" or "Little Maid." Everyone gets these little nicknames when they're young & will be forever deemed that by family. At least I'm not called "Little Mosquito", like my friend Chiao. *GRIN*
My family's from Fuzhou in the Fujian
Province of Mainland China. We're from the South, so we're relatively
short people (I'm 5'2"; one of the tallest in the family). [These pics,
by the way, are not of Fuzhou. The left pic is the amazing Summer
Palace. It's located in the northeast corner of Beijing (not Peking, like
the duck) - China's capital. Awesome, AWESOME place, really magical, and
exactly how I want my house to look like when I grow up...]
Everyone's heard about the Great Wall (left).
It's one of the Seven (there are still that many, right?) Wonders of the
World and can, amazingly, be seen from space. Anyhoo, we Chinese from my
family like to chow down on a lot of rice. Many northern provinces have
this obsession with noodles and flour. *shiver* Now, I'm not saying
anything's wrong with that... And our food is not as spicy or salty as it
could get in northern China or Japan, though we can take a fiery
jalopiño with the best of 'em. Fuzhou doesn't get enough snow
for a snowball and there's a body of water of some kind running through
it. Southerners are also known for their love of seafood and of course
the world-renowned Dim Sum of Canton.
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If you'd like to see some fantastic pictures of the People's Republic of China, click here. Rubber duckies not included.
Later, my family moved to Hong Kong, an island on the Southeasternmost tip of China. What's snow and freezing cold? Don't ask Hong Kong citizens. They wouldn't know the meaning of the words. Great Britain returned control of this world financial center to the People's Republic of China on July 1st, 1997. Meanwhile, the world watches, as 5000-year-old tradition meets the cutting edge.
In the 1980s, my family came to the United States. We lived a while in Charlottesville, Virginia (home of UVA) until Second Grade and then we moved to DC, where we've been ever since.
I got into Strong John (it sounds like underwear, I know) Thomson Elementary School, just a couple weeks before the explosion of the Challenger Space Launch. I remember we talked about it at length: the bravery of the astronauts and how we shouldn't be afraid to keep on trying. School was fun, though my mom had a tendency to make me wear pants under my dresses in the winter. That was a slight bit embarassing. Those were the winters when the snow was about three to four feet deep. Once, I was dumb enough to jump from my porch to the walk into pure, unshoveled snow. You'd never think anything so small could jump so fast, so far outta there in retreat. : )
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I met my first best guy friends in Elementary School. Jorge, Mario, and Jia-Yi were the sweetest and most handsome guys you could ever meet. Each totally different in character, but you could count on them to add something special to a day. Jorge had a way of flustering a female, until she blushed to her roots. But when you really talked to him, he'd surprise you with his sensitivity. Mario constantly amazed me with his natural talent for everything. Artistic, intelligent, though a bit guarded and isolated at times, his heart was as gushy as marshmellow. Jia-Yi had an endearing and wide-eyed luminence to him that was extremely contagious. Although he may have appeared somewhat lost sometimes (hey, who hasn't?) and pensive at others, you could count on him when the chips are down. Guys: Paris will never recover... : )
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The four of us migrated to Thomas Jefferson Junior High, on the wharf in Southwest Washington. (Recess entailed all sorts of... "fresh" olfactory experiences.) We were immediately shuttled into "special" classes and became the "guinea pigs" of an experimental Math and Science program. Almost all of us were separated and scuttled through the roller-coaster ride of adolescence and "first" experiences. It was inevitable that we grew apart during those years. After all, being in different classes, menstruation, and other elements can do that to friendship.
At Jefferson, I met the first of my
closest friends. Laura was in my seventh grade homeroom, but we
didn't become friends until the eighth grade, cuz she always had her head
in a book. She was my first real female friend. The tom-boy image was
getting old, and female understanding was becoming more of a necessity.
The Red-Head was also a hopeless tom-boy, so it worked out perfectly.
Now, the Wenham family back then did all sorts of neat things on the
weekend. We went bike-riding, dog-walking, video-game playing,
everything. Ah, youth.
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Laura and I related to each other pretty well, because we were both considered introverts and nerds at school. We loved to read and be active. We had no overwhelming need to spend an hour on our hair or painting our nails or whatever else "real" girls did. Nope, we wanted to climb trees and see lots of movies and just run around and have fun like boys did.
In addition to Laura, I also met a couple
of my other closest friends at Trojan (we sound like a contraceptive, I
know.... notice a trend here?) World (aka Jefferson Junior High).
Lottise, aka Grandma, aka Granny, aka Grammy, arrived in my homeroom in
8th grade, but we didn't really connect until 9th grade, when her boytoy
and I became somewhat of friends and my boytoy and her became somewhat
friends. And then she and I eventually became the best of friends,
especially after the break-up of our respective relationships. We've been
laughing and making people look at us ever since. Grandma and I have this
connection that neither of us could ever explain. Lottise is so pretty
and so generous. I knew I'd make a great psychologist, because whenever
someone had a problem, I'd freeze and refer them on to Granny. She is
wise beyond her years. And then some. And she's my best
friend. *sniff*
I also met up with Chiao in the 9th grade. Wow. If there's any way to describe this girl, it's WOW. Even then, during the chaos of puberty, where fashion swerves and recreates itself every other second, Chiao was on top of things. Her innate fashion sense got her voted "Best Dressed" in High School. But most of all, Chiao's a great friend. At first, we thought we had nothing in common. Especially since she sometimes hung out with the "Chinatown crew" and I was never part of or interested in those vagabonds. But we spent the latter part of 9th grade together, just leaning on each other if we needed, too. We counselled each other on relationships and being a girl in a traditional Chinese family. Then, in her junior year of high school, she moved into my house. And we had the deepest and the stupidest conversations until 3 or 4 in the morning on a school night. I really miss her since she's off to the West Coast.
I met Rashiida at junior high graduation. She was one out of
FIVE salutatorians, and in my opinion, one of the more naturally gifted of
the bunch. I'd thought she was just part of the "popular" crowd. So, I'd
bore her to tears within 5 minutes of our meeting, right? 
I think we both surprised each other. One
salutatorian got pretty tipsy on Countrytime Lemonade and we laughed at
her together. It wasn't until we reached High School and that we were
thrown together often enough to start connecting. She finds exceptions
for every rule and takes things in stride. More than once, our life
philosophies have collided, but the friendship has always stood strong,
because we knew that if one was ever in a jam, we'd assault and batter for
each other. And, Shiida? The Curry Chicken's comin', I swear!!! : )
After junior high, we hoard of Trojans landed on GW campus and became School Without Walls Penguins. Why the Penguin? *sigh* Who knows? We're awkward but loyal? We're known for our formal dress? Our males care for our young, while females hunt? Whatever may be the case, as our unofficial war chant goes, WE WODDLE TO VICTORY. :-)
Maybe that motto is more apt than I first thought. Early adolescence was humiliatingly awkward and late adolescence found new definitions for tear-jerking. I was without the boys, whom I'd grown up with. But God bless Walls, because within the nurturing confines of that little school, I found myself.
It was at Walls I met DeAnna. On the first day of volleyball practice, we rode home on the Metro together and we haven't stopped jabbering away since. That fateful afternoon, Dee and I stood in front of my house and talked for hours. About nothing and everything. About our pasts and our hopes. About our favorite tv shows and musik. The girl is a walking trivia book and she can't seem to stop laughing at my Bonjovi imitation. :) Our experience can only be described as... bliss. It had been the first time in my little life that I'd mind-melded with someone so pure and honest and goddamn funny. DeAnna is strength and persevering goodness. No matter how the world seems to so often disappoint us, she's sunlight - that natural luminence that fuels our spirit.
Nevertheless, I fumbled my way through three years of senior high. Academically, I represented the ideal. In other words, I was still a brainiac. Socially and personally, I tripped on nearly every dust particle. The story of every introverted, repressed adolescent female, right?
