Whenever Rick and Lisa walk down the streets of Erie, Pa. People seem to pay special attention to them. They are used to the stares and the whispers from the people of the mostly white community, but being different still irritates and hurts them sometimes.

Rick, an immigrant from Vietnam, had received his share of "Charlie Chans", and "VietCongs." Some kids picked fights with him when he was young, because they wanted see if he was a master at Ku Fu. Rick has never really hated any of them. He just didn't really understand why they all thought of him as a communist. He didn't care much about their comments. However, it wasn't easy for him to get by in the first few years in the U.S., because they were his teenage years when he struggled with his feelings and he really wished that people would just accept him as a person with different features.

When it was time for him to go to college, he stayed in-state and went to a local college. There he met Lisa. A pure-white girl. The reason she was pure-white is because she had never hung out with anybody from other cultures before. Well, that's not exactly true, Her parents took her to Japan once, when she was 5. But that was pretty much her out-of-culture experience.

The day she met Rick she was talking to one of her buddies in a student Christian organization on campus. When Rick went in the room to pray at the corner of the room, he was sitting next to her seat. He didn't seem to notice her even though Lisa is pretty good looking, even with her goofy (she thought) glasses on. Since Lisa was on the greeting committee she naturally had to greet all newcomers, so she turned to Rick and waited with some uncertainty ("Can he speak English?"), until finally Rick looked up.

"Hi, I am Lisa, and this is John, and that's Paul, that's Matt, and that's Rev. Jackson," she spoke, then she waited again with some uncertainty. She was relived when Rick spoke in good English and greeted all of them. He talked with everyone with a kind voice that reveals a good heart, and he looked at everyone with strong but compassionate eyes.

As time went on, Lisa stopped thinking of Rick as "Vietnamese." Rather, she thought of Rick as, well, "Rick." One day when they went out to a local McDonald's on their own, nobody from the Christian group was sure if it was a date or not. Some in the group didn't think Lisa would find Rick attractive, since he wasn't white. Nobody else really thought about Rick and Lisa's relationship, until one day Lisa told her roommate and close friend that she and Rick were going out.

People in her Christian circle did not react in too negative a way. Some more conservative people in the Christian group who were friends of Lisa's expressed some doubt about Rick and Lisa's relationship. They thought Rick and Lisa were too different. Some of Lisa's non-Christian friends, especially her sorority sisters, were not too happy with her choice, even though who Lisa dates is really Lisa's own business. Some of the sorority sisters started to get uncomfortable around Lisa when she was with Rick. Some just avoided talking to her all together; considering the college they were attending wasn't big, it wasn't easy to avoid people.

At first Lisa wasn't too sure what the problem with some of her friends was. She didn't understand why some of her good friends had just gotten "extra" busy with school work all of a sudden. Finally her roommate told her the truth after Lisa cried and complained about her eroding friendship with some of her good friends. Lisa didn't want to keep her relationship with Rick a secret, so she wasn't mad at her roommate. But she couldn't believe that some of her friends would just stop being friends because she was dating a Asian guy. She wanted to tell her mom about her new boyfriend, but she got worried because her mom (her dad left her mom and her when she was 7) is a very conservative person.

At the same time, Rick and Lisa were starting to show some strain. There are some things about Rick that Lisa didn't really like. Whenever they went out, Rick was slightly passive and preferred to let Lisa make most of the decisions. Lisa likes to make decisions, but she also liked Rick to be a little more aggressive and take more charge.

Rick, being an immigrant, sometimes speaks, well, funny, and he's quiet. Lisa's more outgoing, and she sometimes can't help but laugh at Rick's accent. Rick hated that, and sometimes he would just not call or explain that he was angry. Rick's silence irritated Lisa because she wants Rick to talk about his own feelings, and voice his objections. But Rick preferred to be silently angry whenever Lisa offended him. Lisa was very frustrated because it seemed that every time she turned around, she would discover she had said or done something stupid in front of Rick, even though she never wanted to offend him on purpose.

There are some things about Lisa that Rick couldn't understand. Lisa is outgoing, likes to laugh at just about everything, and make fun of just about everything. Rick is more serious, and he thought Lisa was a bit too wild. He liked her optimism, but he disliked her study habits. Lisa liked to do her homework on the night before it was due, and she would go to Rick's room and ask him for help. While he wanted to be around her, he also really wanted to study.

Rick's friends liked Lisa, they all thought she was very friendly, but when Lisa, Rick and Rick's friends hangout, Rick tends to speak with his friends in Vietnamese, and they would laugh hard at something, and Lisa would feel left out.

One day, Lisa and Rick decided to sit down and talk about their problems. Surprisingly, it was Rick who thought they should talk. "I care about you too much." Rick said. Everything seemed so complex at the time, but once they sat down and started to talk about their feelings, problems, and frustrations, all the problems became a little smaller. Rick and Lisa were going crazy over seemingly little things, and in Lisa's case, big things. However, men and women have always had problems communicating, and in Rick and Lisa's case it was harder.

Finally, Rick and Lisa made out a list of faults they would like each other to improve. Rick really comforted Lisa, and he spoke about his love and feelings to her. They went to the campus' Christian counselor, he suggested that Rick and Lisa try to hangout with Lisa's more conservative friends. Also he thought it would be a good idea to invite some of Lisa's friends to come to the Christian group, because it's actually more diverse than a lot of other student groups.

I don't know how their relationship is doing because I've lo