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About Me — Happy Hapa
An Asian American living abroad in Asia
So, here you are. Too foreign for home, too foreign for here. Never enough for both.
Ijeoma Umebinyuo
Life abroad
My name is Jenn and three years ago, I moved from the US to Singapore. Writing that sentence after I’d spent so many years dreaming about living abroad still feels strange, in a good way.
A curiosity about other cultures has always been a part of my life, from growing up in a multicultural household to studying International Business at university. Like many other college students, my first experience living abroad was a semester-long study abroad program. The roughly four months I spent in France opened my eyes to a different way of living and inspired me to find a way to live overseas again — but this time, for longer.
At the end of 2021, just as the world began to open again, an opportunity to pursue a dream I’d pushed to the back of my mind for the past two years found me. The company I worked for was opening a new office in Singapore and needed a handful of staff to relocate to hire and train new team members. Even though I’d never visited Singapore before and would be moving across the world by myself during an unpredictable…