Descriptive Essay: Moving To USA

I remembered nothing, but as I stepped off the plane into the tropical humidity I felt a sense of familiarity. Soon after landing at the sleepy Nadi international airport my father and I boarded a cramped bus on its way to the capital of Fiji, Suva, my birthplace. Perhaps if George Speight had kept his ambitions in check and decided not to attempt a coup d'etat in 2000 it could have been my home. But it was not to be, and as the sounds of gunfire trickled down from the parliament up the road to our home at the Pacific Theological College (PTC), my parents decided to evacuate our family of five and move back to the United States. For many years my Fijian heritage was nothing more to me than an easy answer to the age-old icebreaker: “Your name
and one interesting fact about you”. It did help me avoid some first-day childhood anxiety but as I grew older I began to explore my cultural heritage more. I had always been surrounded by my Chinese and Irish background. I grew up listening to my grandfather play in an Irish band and living in a very Irish part of the country with a very Irish last name. Patrick, Siobhan, Daniel, and Sean McDonough: the names of my father and siblings sound about as Irish as Guinness. However, my mother makes sure that blend of cultures that is unique to Hawaiian-born Chinese was present in our lives. It was a unique part of my life that I was never quite confident enough to brandish until high school. Today you can find me eating smelly rice cracker snacks, eating spam musubi and wearing slippers (flip-flops for all you mainlanders) well into October. This mix of island culture and old world Irish influence is a massive part of my life, but as I grew older I began to look into the other island culture that was in my past.
This exploration culminated in a carefully planned (shout out to Alaska Airlines for their generous mileage program) trip back to where I had been born in the summer of my junior year.
The urban sprawl of Suva held so much of my early life from my parent’s first house at PTC to my birthplace at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital with its rusting sign and broken strips of barbed wire atop the chain-link fence. It was here that I was shown the hospitality that is present in every facet of life in Fiji we simply walked through the front door and when questioned by a security guard about our purpose for being there my father answered that I had been born there. A smile and laugh greeted the statement and with no further questions we were led on a tour of the maternity ward where I was born. Moments like these began to open my eyes to the hidden influence that my Fijian heritage that had been in my life. The recipe for my favorite dish that my parents cook, chicken curry comes from the rich Indo-Fijian culture present on the Island. Perhaps even my love for football comes from a young exposure to the best rugby-7s team in the world. But beyond any superficial taste that may come from Fiji I inherited a genuine joy to be alive from the small island nation. I may not be the most demonstrative about it but just as Fijians remain happy through numerous coups and massive tropical storms I take things in stride and keep smiling. Whether I’m stuck in the middle of the Adirondack
wilderness at 2am with a summer leadership program or just going through a tough week at school it's all about accepting what's given to you and moving forward with a wide Fijian grin that reaches 8,000 miles back to where it was born.