3/10/18 A Global Start

    In the Spring of my ninth grade year, I went to Cuba. From staying in a vastly metropolitan hotel in the heart of Havana, to living with a Cuban family in the small town of Viñales, I was able to thoroughly experience all that Cuba had to offer. The trip was nothing short of phenomenal. With an amazing itinerary and engaged chaperones, our Poly GIP group fully immersed ourselves in the culture of a nation with a complex, fascinating, and painful history. Before my trip to Cuba, the only other international trip I had taken was to Denmark, a great country in its own right, but, ultimately, quite “Westernized” and not all that different from the US. Exploring Cuba was something wholly different from anything I’d ever experienced, and I’ll never forget it. Academically, my trip sparked my interest in global politics and US foreign involvement, among other things. Beyond that, though, my trip to Cuba awakened a part of me that was adventurous, a part of me that wanted to learn for the sake of learning, a part of me that, for the first time, truly wanted to push myself into new territory.

    Since I’ve been back in the US, I’ve explored a substantial amount of Los Angeles-- cities that I might never have felt compelled to see and experience had I not taken the trip. On the weekends, alone or with friends, I love to drive down the 110 or the 134, getting off at a different exit everytime, and find a new pocket of LA to see and learn about. I’m not sure if this, specifically, can be accredited entirely to my trip to Cuba, but, as of more recently, my eyes have opened more widely to the world around me. I notice small things more often. In Highland Park, I notice the telephone poles cutting through the backyards of bungalows. In Chinatown, I notice the lights in the apartments above the dumpling houses and firecracker shops. In Echo Park, I notice where the hills empty out: on Sunset-- city-wide arteries all united towards a common goal. This interest and attention to detail, this genuine curiosity about, and love for, every facet of every person of every city, is precisely what I think I can bring to the Poly GIP program. I am truly and wholeheartedly enthralled by human connection and individuality and how we, as people, build up and contribute to the places around us, especially in the context of ever-occurring globalization.