Florida 🏝 Filipino 🇵🇭 Pao! finding out you’re adopted at 22 😱 día de muertos 💀 teaching English in Korea 🇰🇷 (37)

Co-Host: Pao / Host: Xinyi Xan (@xinyixan) 👋🏼  Say Hi @dontbestrangers ✕ 💬 Chat on Our Discord 📆 See Full Calendar of All FREE Upcoming Events! BONUS: 📍🗺 ☕️ Coffeeshops + 💻 Remote Offices Welcome back to Don’t Be Strangers, a podcast and community focused on fighting adult loneliness and the myth that “making friends is hard”. **I’m your host XinYi, and I typically meet my co-hosts for the very first time while recording! If this sounds fun to you, please consider applying to co-host a future episode. Today I’m chatting with Pao whom I actually had my first ever conversation with on this podcast. Sure, he applied and we had a few back and forths in terms of setting up the call, but I had no idea what to expect when I logged on. And I must confess that I’m often easily swayed by how people communicate virtually via text. So something I recognize that I personally value is the use of emojis and exclamation points, because otherwise, I read sentences with a tone of almost indiference? So Pao, if you’re listening, my first text-impression of you was that you were very serious. And I was doubly intimidated by the topics he proposed. But standing behind my mission to share the stories and perspectives of everyone who is gracious enough to come on, I didn’t let it deter me. Now, you may have a very skewed perspective of Pao given that introduction, but let me say — he completely surprised me and I absolutely adored this conversation. It truly surpassed all expectations and allowed me to dig into conversation topics that I need practicing with. This conversation today touched on… the Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese cultural perspective on celebrating and honoring our ancestors teaching English and living abroad in Korea finding out you’re adopted at the age of 22 our first experiences with death (I’ll add the trigger warning of suicide) finding out that Pluto is no longer a planet There is so much gold in this conversation, and even though the topic of death was extremely intimidating to me, Pao taught me that it’s completely possible to talk about scary topics in a very light-hearted, encouraging, and positive light. There was also a bunch of storytimes in this conversation, so if you like that stuff, you’re gonna love this! With that, please meet Pao…