The Junior Achievers BAFTX Scholarship was an incredible privilege, honor, and gift to my life. My heart holds so much gratitude and so much warmth when returning to all the memories, all that I’ve learned from England and from those with me on the trip—here is my beautiful summer story of 2018.
"Dieungoc, would you accept a spot on our scholarship trip to England?" Ms. Kay asked over the phone. I remember incoherently screaming a "Yes!!"
A “yes!!” as I punched
and jumped into the air on my front porch, the sky cloudy and grey but my heart
felt like it was filled with daylight.
Then, I remember the take-off.
I remember the incredible amount of boiling excitement inside. How I couldn't
wait to dorm with a roommate from another state. How I couldn't wait to feel
small next to the Stonehenge, stare up at the arches of Westminster Abbey where
Stephen Hawking and the Unknown Warrior rest, walk along the beautiful art
exhibits of the Tate Modern. And how far away from home I'd be, for the first time
in forever.
Traveling on my own outside of the country was a luxurious dream somewhere in the back of mind, ready to be pulled out after I finished college, after I have a job, after I have my first stable career, after my parents are settled comfortably and I can afford them a nice place to live the rest of their days, after everything that should happen happens – would I dare to chase after that dream, yet there I was, on a no expenses, fully paid trip to visit the country of my dreams. My breath caught in my chest. The shock hadn’t truly hit me until I put my baggage in the overhead, sat myself next to my friendly comrades, and readied myself for the take-off across the Pacific Ocean.
Those first moments were the epitome of what it meant to be young and free and on a plane.
Once I arrived in England and realized people drove on the left side, that's when insecurity started bustling in.
I've always been a socially anxious person. Consider me an extroverted introvert. All I wanted was to find and create a family in the short two weeks that I was there.
So I began opening up to my roommate, who turns out to be Diana. My best buddy on the plane from Houston!
We shared late-night stories. We shared Korean dramas together. So many aspects
of our lives were shared that I found myself opening up to Diana very quickly. She
is honestly one of the kindest, warmest, and most thoughtful and intelligent
individuals that I came to know on the trip. It would be later that I would
discover what I saw in Diana in everyone else in the most memorable 2 weeks of
my life.
So, the trip itself!
As I explored England and walked upon hundreds and thousands of years of history, I began to find bits and pieces of my adventurous spirit that I had suppressed for years.
I rediscovered the girl who still idealized history, truth, and justice as I traversed through the Holocaust exhibition in the Imperial War Museum (disbelief filling me as I passed each exhibit and catching my friends eyes in moments of shared shock and horror) and as I stared up at the intricate art along the walls of the Palace of Westminster, my breath stolen from me the moment I entered the House of Commons and House of Lords as I imagined the discourses that happened in those rooms.
I rediscovered the girl that stayed and stared at beautiful things for far too long. The paintings, sculptures, and media shows in the Tate Modern glow brightly in the back of my mind. I remember the looks of wonder on my friends faces as time slowed and we drank in each exhibit. The “staying and staring” never stopped. I remember the long wait to get onto the London Eye, a humongous Ferris wheel for the best possible 360’ view of London. 6 or 7 of my friends grouped together tightly under my one umbrella to escape the heat of the sun during the wait. Eventually, we got onto the London Eye and had the coldest air invite us in. We cooled off on the benches inside our little pod while quickly taking in the beautiful view as we ascended slowly. The wait was more than worth it. We saw the Thames up close, its little boats and ships, Big Ben under construction, Westminster Abbey, the Palace of Westminster, the London Bridge, beautiful buildings jutting as far as the edge of the horizon, and traffic as far as the eye can see. This view is imprinted in the back of my mind—beautiful and unforgettable.
I rediscovered the girl that loved live theatre. Watching Hamlet in the Globe Theatre and having one of the best seats in the house. I had studied Hamlet in high school only to see it in person, in England, in the Globe Theatre! To begin to describe it as purely “magical” doesn’t do it justice. The performance was brilliant: the director herself was also Hamlet, the dancing swords, the beautiful monologues. My group and I were captivated from beginning to end, riding the excitement all the way back on our walk to our buses in the cool, night air, and returning to our dorms like kids, speaking only of Hamlet.
I discovered the girl who talked about how fresh the breeze felt and how incredibly blue the ocean was as I sat down and devoured my first authentic plate of fish and chips in Brighton with my best friends, watching the puffy clouds drift by over Brighton's blue beach and skipping along the sidewalks and through traffic as if we had all the time in the world. The colors of Brighton and its busy touristy streets, coffee shops and quick eats up close to one another, stalls upon stalls of jewelry and sunglasses and airy clothes, a store dedicated entirely to the most beautiful pairs of heels I’ve ever seen – Brighton burst with the kind of energy that I can never forget. Its chilly deep blue waters inviting me in, just as my friends did when I was too scared to dip a toe in. I can hear them now, “Ngoc, it’s not too cold! Just jump in!” And I did. Only to find out too late that I had been fooled.
I rediscovered the girl who enjoyed the warm presence of meeting another quality human being as I sat down with my small group of friends, united by our love for slow tea-sipping and honest stories about everything we could ever talk about. I don’t think I’ve ever quite felt as alive as I did then, spending evenings with my friends on the swing sets across from the dorms, admiring each others’ strength in our stories and forgetting that one day, we’d have to separate. There were so many moments of vivid self-discovery, so much laughter, and so much warmth under the orange English evening sky, streaked in all of the love and possibility that we saw in each other and burned with the foreverness of our echoing laughs as if night would never come. It was truly as if I had already built another family away from home. Actually, not “truly if” if it was true.
I began to discover new facets within myself. I was far too surprised to admit it then, but England had helped shape me into a wiser, more open-minded individual than I could ever hope to be without it.
One of the most life-changing lessons of the trip for me was this: don’t wait. Create your own moments. Create them all. And how would I possibly know? I lived it!
It was a cool, breezy evening. Coming back from a long day of walking throughout London and admiring the gorgeous art pieces from the Tate Modern, Diana and I decided to just call it a day. "We're gonna head back and take a long nap. "
Except before we even reached our dorm, one of the other girls whom we had rarely conversed with, reached out to us and asked, "Hey guys? You guys want to play tennis tonight?"
Before I could utter how weary I was, Diana looked at me and mouthed, "new friends!" and turned back to the new girl to reply for me. "Yes! We'd love to play." And that sealed the deal for that evening. Tennis with new buddies. Tennis despite how tired we all felt. But gosh, as I sit here and type this, I am far more grateful now that Diana replied as she did. Her hesitant but excited, "Yes!"
And off we headed to the courts just a short walk away from the school. Walking as a small group of 6-ish students, I felt... something happen. The makings of something magical felt all too real in the air that evening, yet at the time, I couldn’t put a finger on it. Joking around and playing tennis together. Awfully. Awfully. Without anyone keeping score, a bunch of youngsters played together under the darkening, orange sky. I felt connected. I felt present and tied by nothing but laughter and love. Perhaps I sound like a friendless teenager. For sure, I sound lame, but that night was the beginning of a beautiful friendship among our small group of friends. We weren't just building camaraderie; we were building family.
But it was soccer games that solidified my newfound friendships. Gosh, soccer... my inner FIFA World Cup fan came out and I played as if I was a Croatian soccer player, fast and tough.
Through many games of evening soccer together (3 v 3), my friends and I were each other's defenders, opponents, and cheerleaders. Racing through the wide, green field, I found myself at ease and in tune with the girl who may not be able to run as fast as the other kids but loved to run just the same. Of course, most of the time I was out of breath and survived as my team's goalie, haha. After the two-hour length games, we would all wearily walk to the swing sets on the playground further away. It was on the swings and benches that we would share stories about our lives back home. Where we hoped to end up maybe 4 years from now. 6 years from now. Today, I keep those conversations deep in my heart. And if you were there, you would see us all trying to balance on this ride that twirls you around and around, laughing. You would hear us play loud music and belt our voices as loud as we could to Let It Go or some American rock classic. Just kids, all with difficult, uncertain futures and lives back home. Yet despite that, we managed to bond over the simplest things: sports and music.
And if you were walking alongside us in Brighton along the busy shops and the boba shops, you would see us all grouped together, carefully crossing the streets in our summer sandals, laughing about some musical nonsense. In those moments, I felt as if my heart was home. It felt as if... a part of me would always belong to those moments, belong with the friends I had made there, belong to England.
Gosh. England...
On my plane back to Houston, there was more than enough evidence to say that I had just made a lifetime of happiness and friendships in the span of two weeks. I kept these friendships and though, today, the group chat is clearly not as alive as it used to be, but the support is still there. We all separated back into our lives and promised each other we would live them to the best of our ability. It is difficult to communicate how proud I am of every single person I met on the trip and how I hope they really live their dreams. Each of them deserves that and more—they deserve to have it all, to have the world.
For me after my trip had ended, my dreams lied in... "what are my next steps to getting into the college of my dreams?"
Hence, after England, I worked hard and spent the rest of the summer applying to college fly-ins to which I fell in love with Smith. It was indescribably quick how fast I fell in love but when I did, it did not feel all too different from the love I had for England.
Each of those fly-ins felt as if I was reliving England except the location was different, the people were different, but the adventure was still there. The adventure would always be there. And it was with that mindset that made every fly-in so unique and memorable. England taught me that I can be thrown into a whole new world and still flourish like no one's business. And that is an aspect of myself that won't go away any time soon and I hope to keep cultivating.
My ultimate decision to choose Smith lies not in the fact that it was far from home or that it was traditionally an all-women's college but in the belief that this is a place I can see myself becoming the best version of myself just as England and the wonderful, beautiful people I met there, encouraged me to be. England has, undoubtedly, taught me many life lessons, but it has also helped inform my decisions after it.
Today as a sophomore at Smith, I have yet to finalize my major. I have yet to figure out the details beyond the next year or so, but day by day, I am driven towards refugee politics as I reconnect with the history of how I came to be in the US. I do not yet know what desiring this future would mean for me. However, I do know that my trip to England allowed me to see how interconnected and beautiful the globe that we share is. I hope to fit more pieces of the globe into my mind. I wish to grow and use the knowledge that I cultivate to help efforts made to improve it--- little by little, tiny chunk by tiny chunk, in all the ways I know best.
I hope that you’ll throw yourself into a new world and create what you can, while you can. There’s not a life after this one.😊
So. Let's do this thing.
Let's be brave.
Your girl... <3
Ngoc
P.S. I need you to imagine what it is you want to create in your life. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to dream limitlessly. Surround yourself with people who inspire you and... I can’t wait to see what you’ll create. 😊
A random link to a random place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO1OqWwKj1A&ab_channel=SMTOWN
Haha, I know this is a love song but the feelings it gives me, reminds me of England. ^_^
