“We really are the same underneath.”
When I was an exchange student in Thailand I was placed in central Thailand in a very rural area. I was one of two girls with blonde hair in an entire school of 5000 Thai girls, grades from kindergarten to senior year. During that time I felt really alienated at first because I was singled out for everything that I did as the not Thai girl. What I learned from it is that we really are the same underneath all of it because I became friends with them and the more I’ve gotten to know them and they’ve gotten to know me we realized, I was totally part of the club. And now living in LA I see so many different cultures and people from different backgrounds and I still feel the same, that we are still the same. I learned that in Thailand. Once you spend time around people they all welcome you into their tribe.
I’ve been homeless for about six months after a very rough relationship last spring. I packed up my stuff into a storage unit and I used my security deposit to get on a plane to Denmark. Then I spent all summer long backpacking with no money through Europe living on organic farms and then I got back to LA. I’m a filmmaker and I needed to find a place so I googled places in LA that would do the same thing and I found the New Reality Garden and I moved there. They were looking for filmmakers. That’s where I met Danielle and we live out on a commune now.
Making a new family is the same thing I’m going through now at the commune where I’ve got new people around me, bridging that gap, becoming friends and family just the same way that I did with my host family, who I consider still to be my family these days and I’ve adopted that culture as my own.
I do have a stuffed animal it is a bear that I got for my host dad in Thailand went we went to visit this temple in the north part of Thailand. He brings me good luck, he is very small. His name is Sebastian.