October 2005 was the first time I realized I had to get my daughter out of our country, Indonesia. She had spent three months as a first grader in a private school in east of Jakarta, and I saw that there was no improvement in Indonesia’s education system. I was furious. Sending my daughter to […]
Though I was born in Sài Gòn, the capital city of what was formerly South Vietnam is not the childhood home I remember most; rather it is a watery landscape covered with rice paddies and fruit orchards in the Mekong Delta where my family was exiled in 1978 when I was seven. Three years earlier, […]
I am a true global citizen, a student and an educator and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Once you read through this, you may think I’ve lived several lives in this short life, but I promise you that isn’t the case. I was born in Harare Zimbabwe in the early 80’s. Zimbabwe is […]
More than one hundred years ago, my grandfather Avraham Titenskaya stood as a young child in the big room at the new immigrant arrivals hall on Ellis Island. He took the same oath virtually every American immigrant has taken. Avraham and his family had come from Dniepro-Petrovsk in Ukraine sometime around 1904, through Odessa on […]
My family’s origins begin at the birthplace of civilization, philosophy, and wisdom—Greece! At least if you believe the Greek supremacy portrayed in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding that’s true. The movie is often quoted in my house and while it’s a caricature of Greek-Americans—loud, brash, talking over one another, food-focused and family-oriented—it hits […]