places that make you who you are...
A lot of my life is about moving, about adapting to new places and new environments. So I guess my life started in Richlands, Virginia which I have no recollection of. Then at two and a half our family moved to Lexington, Kentucky. This is where, in my memory, our large house sits, the beginning of my schooling starts and field trips to the Kentucky Derby occur. As if first grade for a timid Chinese American isn't hard enough, I had to move three times within first grade. From Lexington, KY to Edison,NJ to East Windsor, NJ. This was about trying to make friends and feeling like I belonged. Passing out M&M's to prove to myself that I had friends. All in all by the time I was in second grade, the teacher misjudged the 'quiet little Asian girl' because I was moved to another seat for talking too much. I moved to a new school district when I was in fourth grade. Princeton, NJ was a tough move but it was easier than the one to come a year later. Walking home to the ice crem shop, sleeping over at school watching the 1990 presidential elections, 'my hat it had three corners', kick the ball....living in a cramped up apartment was only a preparation to moving to Taiwan. Summer of 1990 was the biggest move of my life, moving to Taipei, Taiwan. After living in the suburbs all my life without the rest of my extended family Taipei City, home to my father's six brothers and sisters, is something hard to adjust to. You realize that you are an outsider to all your cousins that grew up together. They ask, "Are you American or Chinese?", trapping you both ways. Seeing that you don't posses blond hair and blue eyes yet attends the American school instead of the local elementary school.
Although I might look back on this and see how hard it was, I think it's only right to see that my life could have been much harder. The flip side of this could have been life without parents without a comfortable home. It is only through the struggles and hardships that you truly mature. So I take my life the way it has been given to me because these things makes me who I am today; there is no other way it could have been done. This is my life.
[history]
[college]
[resume]
[photogallery]
[links]
Karen Y. Sun
9/4/00
