I have moved into my apartment here in Indianapolis two weeks ago.
I would say the people here in the midwest are laid back, but they have had limited exposure to East Asian or East Indian people, although I would say that there seems to be a lot more East Indians than Asians living in Indiana.
I was surprised though, that there are two Korean grocery stores here, two Korean restaurants (my friends told me there are two more, but they are far away from my apartment). I think there are approximately 5000-6000 Koreans and Korean-Americans living in Indianapolis. There are also a lot of Chinese, who tops the East Asian category. In fact I made friends with a Vietnamese guy in my class, and a Taiwanese guy (immigrated from Taiwan, so he has a foreign accent...luckily nobody seems to tease him).
I feel so odd only hanging out with Asian guys in my class. There are only a total of 5 East Asian guys in my class, including myself, one of the five being a half Chinese-caucasian male who looks more Chinese. There are 5 East Asian girls in my class, two being Korean (one is an adopted girl), one Taiwanese, one ethnic Chinese form Indonesia, and the last beinga Filipino girl. So I'd say about 10% of my class is East Asian.
A lot of the white students in my class seem to not want to talk to me or even introduce myself. At many times, I have to be "pro-active" and introduce myself before they realize that I'm not a foreign student.
As for the locals here, some of them seem pretty friendly. Others are cold and think I can't speak English.
In fact I went to the BMV to take my driver's license written exam a week ago. The lady at the counter not only mistakenly pronounced my lastname, but also asked me if I wanted to take the written exam in Japanese! (WTF!)
So that's what has been going on for me in the last couple of weeks.
Been busy reading a ton of materials for my classes.
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