WRITING PROMPT 56
A Seat on the Bus: A Journey Through Adversity and Kindness
How a single act of courage shaped my understanding of humanity
Up until age 14, I lived on three continents and attended American International Schools, where my friends came from a variety of countries and backgrounds. If you stood in the hallways of any of my schools outside the United States, you would see a myriad of skin colors, from the brightest white to the darkest dark and everything in between. There were no racial slurs or even mention of someone being different from another.
Moving to a new country was a familiar concept to our family. This new country was the United States. The only difference was that I was told we were staying because my father retired from his State Department career. So, there I was, on the first day of school in a city in Florida.
This is an excerpt from my contribution to the book Mixed Korean: Our Stories.
On that day, as I stood at the nameless bus stop, those images were a distant memory. There I stood, excited and nervous. I remember that I was dressed in a matching skirt and top and white, vinyl, open-back pumps. My mother wanted to make sure that I was dressed appropriately for school. It was Florida, so the sun was out, even at…
