Both of these are things that, in my normal environment, I would have been more reluctant to try. In terms of food, I loved having milk tea almost every day, and really enjoyed dishes such as udon noodles and sizzling rice plates. They have become favorites of mine. As for culture, the whole experience was something new to me, and was also quite enjoyable. One of the biggest areas of cultural difference that I experienced while abroad relates to religion. On my first Sunday in Hong Kong, I went to a Catholic mass held in Cantonese. Something that I witnessed multiple times over the course of the semester is that in Asian masses, more of the responses are sung than I was used. I also had the chance to visit religious sites not affiliated with Christianity and to learn more about the role other religions play in Asian culture. This was neat for me, as I do not experience Buddhist, Taoist or Shinto religious influences in my culture back at home. Being able to learn more about the roles these religions played in unifying a group of people, or helping to spread certain ideologies within a population, helped to give me insight into some of the larger cultural differences between the United States and Asia, such as the value and importance of family.
This time abroad also helped me to learn more about myself. I'd wondered what it would be like to live and work in another part of the world for a couple of years, and now that I have lived abroad, I recognize that as much as I enjoyed my semester abroad, living abroad permanently would be hard for me. Almost all of my family lives in the United States, and most of my family lives within the state of Missouri.
