All posts tagged: childhood memories

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ David L. Merin

Published by Confessions of a Jetsetter

“Five years old I sat on a plane wondering aloud “Mom… can we still talk to each other in English when we get there?” The true honesty of a boy torn between a Filipino father and a New Yorker mother, born in Hawaii and now in transit to Nepal, a country unmatched in its ethnic diversity. My childhood was truly fit for a movie… In the many years to follow, my mother would try to comfort my confusion by giving me an identity. “You’re a Third Culture Kid,” she would say, dismissing my doubts, but I couldn’t understand what it meant. I was one of a large number of TCKs growing up overseas who didn’t identify with any one culture. Unable to relate to the country they once called home, TCKs are forced to adapt and survive an international adolescence separating them further from both their family and nationality. Though each of us has an original story, we all share a common experience, which we live every day. As for my friends and I, we …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Diana Lee Santamaria

Published by Confessions of a Jetsetter

“I’m the children’s book author of DLee’s World preschool learning books, which are based on my childhood and experiences as an educator. Throughout my life, there have been a few things that inspired me to write my book series. Most importantly was the fact that I struggled with literacy until about the age of nine. My father noticed I had an issue with reading and comprehension and sat me down night after night with the determination for me not to follow in his footsteps of educational hardships. As early as I could remember, I showed a disinterest in books, always saying, “Books are boring!” However shortly after learning how to read, I found books to be an enjoyable learning tool and past time. With that in mind, once I became a teacher and noticed that I did not always have the books I needed or wanted to teach a particular objective, I decided to write my own… Every night I analyzed my classroom experiences and my own childhood for inspiration on how to make DLee …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Matthew Rodriguez

Published by Confessions of a Jetsetter

“Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine someone putting a plate of food in front of you. You don’t recognize what it is. You swear you’ve never seen anything like it before in your life. You take a bite with slight trepidation. A tingling occurs. Your pupils dilate. It’s delicious. You register a shock: You’ve eaten this before at one point in your life. You don’t remember when you ate it, but with equal certainty that you expressed about not having ever seen anything like this prior to the first bite, you now are unequivocally certain you’ve had this before. The taste triggers vague, nebulous recollections of your childhood from the quiet corners of your mind and then just as quickly they disappear. No other documentation exists that validate those memories other than your own conviction of your thoughts. This plate of unfamiliar food is suddenly the only thing that tells you, “Yes, those memories exist.”  This occurred to me on one of my most memorable trips and experiences when I returned to a place that was …