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.
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"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 the Unknown Warrior rested, 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. ^_^
