Living the Global Dream – I’ve always considered the world as my bubble, not simply limited to the suburbs of NJ where I grew up. Perhaps this is the reason why I never understood the concept of staunch patriotism where only the people in your country matter – I mean, isn’t human life valued the same regardless of where you live?
International traveling began before my conscious memory did. I was 7 months old when I first left the U.S. with my mother to Thailand. My immigrant parents came from southeast Asia. Dad escaped as a Cambodian refugee in 1975 marginally missing the Khmer regime takeover which claimed the lives of most of his family and 1/3 of the population - amounting to 1 million lives. Mom married my dad in a typical soulmate story and left Thailand where she cared for her 7 siblings to live with my dad in the U.S. She experienced some major culture shock and felt intense homesickness for the first few years. My parents labored away day and night in New York City and managed to save large sums of cash from restaurant work. They saved enough to buy businesses and put down payments on a house in cash. They also settled in an all-white small town lacking a zip code in Byram, NJ. Although living the American dream, my parents always wanted to show their kids that there was a bigger world beyond the one laned streets, gentle forests, and small town atmosphere. This outlook involved family vacations to different parts of the U.S., Canada, Thailand, and even missing 2 weeks of elementary school when we went to Australia.
I should mention that it had always been a lifelong dream of mine to partake in international service work. My mom recently told me that when I was about 7 years old, I saw a moving segment on TV showcasing starving children in Africa. I declared to my mom that helping these kids was something I wanted to do when I grew up. She said she tried to discourage me citing that there is no money in that field but I was adamant. My stubborn nature persisted until 2010 when I finally lived out my dream of stepping foot in Africa. Melody, my MPH partner on this trip to carry out malaria research, spent the past summer with me in Shirati, Tanzania. Mel and I spent our days wandering hut to hut carrying out surveys that revealed the burden of malaria and opened our eyes to squalid living conditions and then we would run home and spend our evenings with local Tanzanians playing soccer or hanging in the center of town.
I am incredibly grateful for the way my dreams and life unraveled. Grateful for the wins and good times but also grateful for the trying times and failure, always a humbling lesson. So now I’m living out the global dream – my version of the white picket fence idealism.
International traveling began before my conscious memory did. I was 7 months old when I first left the U.S. with my mother to Thailand. My immigrant parents came from southeast Asia. Dad escaped as a Cambodian refugee in 1975 marginally missing the Khmer regime takeover which claimed the lives of most of his family and 1/3 of the population - amounting to 1 million lives. Mom married my dad in a typical soulmate story and left Thailand where she cared for her 7 siblings to live with my dad in the U.S. She experienced some major culture shock and felt intense homesickness for the first few years. My parents labored away day and night in New York City and managed to save large sums of cash from restaurant work. They saved enough to buy businesses and put down payments on a house in cash. They also settled in an all-white small town lacking a zip code in Byram, NJ. Although living the American dream, my parents always wanted to show their kids that there was a bigger world beyond the one laned streets, gentle forests, and small town atmosphere. This outlook involved family vacations to different parts of the U.S., Canada, Thailand, and even missing 2 weeks of elementary school when we went to Australia.
I should mention that it had always been a lifelong dream of mine to partake in international service work. My mom recently told me that when I was about 7 years old, I saw a moving segment on TV showcasing starving children in Africa. I declared to my mom that helping these kids was something I wanted to do when I grew up. She said she tried to discourage me citing that there is no money in that field but I was adamant. My stubborn nature persisted until 2010 when I finally lived out my dream of stepping foot in Africa. Melody, my MPH partner on this trip to carry out malaria research, spent the past summer with me in Shirati, Tanzania. Mel and I spent our days wandering hut to hut carrying out surveys that revealed the burden of malaria and opened our eyes to squalid living conditions and then we would run home and spend our evenings with local Tanzanians playing soccer or hanging in the center of town.
I am incredibly grateful for the way my dreams and life unraveled. Grateful for the wins and good times but also grateful for the trying times and failure, always a humbling lesson. So now I’m living out the global dream – my version of the white picket fence idealism.
You're truly a gem!!!!!! I love you so much! You're going to continue to make such an impact on all the places you go to!
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