I have now been living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for over seven months! I love eating Bún bò Huế (a beef noodle soup) and lots of tropical fruits. My favorites are thanh long (dragonfruit) and chôm chôm (rambutan). Growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I was never able to try the types of fruits that grow in a tropical place like Vietnam, and it has been one of my favorite parts of living here.
I knew from a young age that I really wanted to travel. I loved watching travel shows and documentaries about places I had never been, so when I was nineteen, I took a gap year (a year off from school between high school graduation and college). I traveled for eight months, spent all the money I saved working at our local ice cream shop, studied French in France and spent five months traveling all over South and Southeast Asia. I was able to visit places like Nepal, India and Vietnam for the first time! I fell in love with traveling and seeing new parts of the world, and I wanted to find more ways to do it. That is how I ended up in Vietnam today.
In college, I didn’t know what I wanted to study. I took classes about international relations, public health, American history and eventually urban policy.
