Memory, Connection and Community: My Fulbright Story
The Fulbright program shaped some of my earliest childhood memories. In 1967, my father received a Fulbright to National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. A math professor at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, he and my mother had never been to another country (except perhaps a trip across Niagara Falls to the Canadian side of the border). They packed up their five children, ranging in age from 2- to 8-years old and traveled to Taiwan. As a 4 year-old, I attended a local Mandarin-speaking pre-school and spent much of my time riding my tricycle, playing with my siblings and little friends, as well as exploring the environs of our neighborhood. Snippets of our year and the many adventures we had reside in my memory, perhaps shaped by the hundreds of slides that my father took during our year abroad, but nevertheless an important source of family stories and identity. From an early age, I understood the joy and wonder of immersion in another culture. The Rungs, Hsinchu, Taiwan, 1967-1968 Taiwan remained connected to my family. For many years, a globe sat in our home with my father’s faded pen marks tracing our route to Taiwan and a
