I often think of the expression “a square peg in a round hole” when I visit my family in Taiwan. That’s exactly how I feel as one of two children in my entire family to have been born and raised in the Western world. Or rather, I feel like a squircle shaped peg trying to fit inside a round hole. Having been brought up by conventional Asian parents, I was imbued with many of the same values, beliefs, and behavior of our family across the Pacific. However, I am also undeniably American, having spent nearly all of my life with Americans. I’ve got a foot in both worlds, and while it’s nothing special in a diverse American environment, that makes me stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of my family.

On both sides of my extended family, I have the notable distinction of being “the American kid”. Literally, I have been called just that by many old aunts and uncles who don’t know my name, but somehow know right off the bat that I’m “that American kid” they were somewhat aware of. I talk like them, follow the same customs, and generally behave like them, but I’m not quite a carbon copy of them. It draws the line at similar, not same. There’s always something off a little here and there that makes me slightly different from the rest of them.

There are some obvious cultural differences, but some things that are normal here are unheard of there, and vice versa. I remember trying to explain a rotating bell schedule and passing periods to my grandparents. Something so integral to the American school system is absent in Taiwan. Instead of transitioning to different classes throughout the day, the teacher comes to the students, meaning a student only interacts with the same 40 or so people in their class the entire year. I’m pretty sure that I’m in the same class as five times that many people in a single day. A few years ago, I also learned from an aunt that class is canceled if a student is sick, meaning her son could go three days at a time without school. I couldn’t wrap my head around it at all. Just when I think I’ve got a grasp on their world, something throws me off balance yet again.

Being apart of two starkly contrasting worlds is like learning a second language. No matter how fluent one is, there’s always a little something that’s different compared to native speakers. Even a slight accent immediately sets one apart from the rest. In my case, my “accent” is the nuances in my behavior. Just like how many of us can recognize international students at a glance without them even speaking a word, my family can instantly pick out that I’m not the same as they are. We are instinctively able to pick out differences, even if we can’t automatically put our fingers on the differences that we recognize.

However, being different isn’t necessarily bad; it’s a nice change to be noticed once in a while, even if it means being introduced as “the American kid”. Different though I may be, I’m still undeniably a part of my extended Taiwanese family, just as I am a part of an American community. I might be a squircle, but that’s because I don’t belong in either a square or circle shaped hole; I fit in the crossing of the two.