Since I know that the country I am going for exchange is Mexico, people keep askin me why would you choose Mexico? With a kind of doubt and unbelievable tone.
While I answered this question, there will be about half of the people telling me that it’s very very dangerous there, I need to take care of my belongings when I am on the street or any other places.
And yes, I know that all the informations and news about Mexico in Taiwan are mostly talking about the guns, the gangs, the murders. The information we can get about Mexico is so little that there is almost nothing. When I searched for the books about Denmark and Switzerland, there are thousands of results, and when I was searching for Mexico, they didn’t even have a tourist guidebook of it, what they have, are just only two literary travel books.
This is the country I am going to stay for a year. Here, my nationality is “China (Taiwan)”, which makes me felt angry and sad every time when I heard of it. Also, the administration staffs will only view us as an “Chinese”.
With all these insecurity and unfamiliar impression, why would I come to Mexico?
Frankly, the reason is actually quite simple, just as most of the European exchange students won’t choose to do the exchange in other European countries, I like to know some totally different culture too. Nowadays we can easily get dozens of informations about European and American’s custom and introductions, surely it is different from experiencing the culture by yourself, but at least we can have some basic understanding about it. But what about Latin America? What about Middle East? What about Africa? There are many amazing photos or articles created in these areas, it is because we don’t understand about it, because we are curious, because it is so mysterious, we wanted to know more and more about it.
Therefore, back to my title, why Mexico? At the beginning, I just want to have the chance to see the world as much as possible, see some totally different sights in the world, meet some really amazing people that will inspire me so much. To tell you why would I have this kind of thought at first. When I was in Europe one year ago, there were so many terror attacks happened in some areas that were close to me and before I am going back to Taiwan, I had a very shocking and memorable car accident. After facing all these moments that were so close to death, I started to rethink my life, I asked myself, “Will I be willing to die today without doing any memorable things?”
The answer is “NO”, definitely no. I don’t want that if I died today, in the age people called “youth age”, “youth age”, people come to my memorials and find out there’s nothing to talk about my life, but I also don’t want that I live some “normal” life till my seventies, and find out there is nothing special to tell about. So, I decided to go away, leave everything behind me. After some talks with my host parents in Poland, I think that exchange student is the fittest way for me to get the chance to change and challenge myself.
Though at the beginning Mexico is not my first choose, it wasn’t even in my chooses, but after some talks with some peoples that have been to exchange, I changed my second choose to Mexico, my first choose was some place that I know there’s only a little chance to have the quota places this year. Here was what I thought, I think that if Mexico is the country I should go, then I will go, let god decided where I should go, let god show me the world I should step on.
Yet there is also one more question that many of my teachers, some parents, and some friends keep asking me even in the last few months before I leave Taiwan, “Why don’t you go to the exchange after you finished your high school?” or “Why don’t you just go study abroad in college?” The truth is, I don’t want to let myself have any excuse to keep staying in my comfort zone, and I was also afraid that if I stay in my comfort zone for too long, I will forget the passion and ambition I have now, then I will settle down and get use to the easy way of living, but I don’t want to be like that, so I know I have to leave now, it’s time for me to see another lifestyle.
At the end of this article, I want to share two of my favorite quotes to you. One is the one everyone knows but we really have to keep it in mind, “You only live once.” There are so many people who I admire always telling about me this quote, they are telling us our life only live once, try the things as much as we can, don’t quit anything before we do it. Another one is “Why tomorrow when there’s today?” It’s a little bit similar to the first one, do everything today, do everything now, don’t leave things you want to try till another day, do it NOW!
To everyone who left their comfort place, to us who wants to become a better person.