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Everything around was the sandy pervasive brown of a dreary desert scene. This was the first thing my eight year-old self noticed as I stepped out of the van on Mae La Refugee Camp, home to roughly 50,000 refugees who had fled to Thailand in order to escape the horrors of the Burma Army. I spent six years of my childhood in Chiang Mai, Thailand where my dad was the principal of an international school. I lived a life unaware of the poverty that lay all around me. In this particular instance, my family and I had taken a van to a refugee camp where the family of Ruthie, my former nanny, lived. At the camp, we met Ruthie’s family and they welcomed us with arms open and hearts ablaze. We were ushered into their homes; I was blown away by the scarcity of it all. Their house was made of bamboo and woven leaves, beds were mats, and there was no air conditioning to be seen. This lack of a cooling system was one of the hardest things for my young brain to grasp. It gets so hot in Thailand; there can be month-long stretches where, every day, it easily gets above 100 degrees with the humidity levels drenching all in sweat. Without AC, I concluded that their lives must be miserable. This naive conclusion stuck with me as we meandered through the camp, observing the rundown facilities that seemed to match the tired brown landscape. Ruthie took us to visit her brother, a teacher at his simple schoolhouse. Its shabby walls were lined with wrinkled posters and the minimal collection of books was well-used and dog-eared. This school was different from anything I had ever been in, and I had this nagging suspicion that this wasn’t fair. My unease haunted me as we approached the hospital. It was a stark contrast from any health facility I had experienced; ones with tables covered in sterile white sheets, fancy cabinets, and the overpowering odor of sanitizer. Here, it appeared as though they had attempted to maintain a level of cleanliness, but they couldn’t quite shake the permeating brown that managed to creep into every nook and cranny. Whether I knew it or not, this trip would have a massive impact on how I would view my own life, and subsequently, how I would view the whole world. Because of my experiences at Mae La, I’ve become very aware of my privilege and good fortune while coming to realize that a large part of why I am where I am today is simply because I am very lucky. I was born a US citizen to two loving and supportive parents who have taught me to be myself and have fostered in me a strong sense of curiosity, giving me a safe place to wonder and question the workings of the world. This realization of the injustices prevalent in the world has aided in my journey to serve others and to work to better the world around me. I had believed that the people living in that camp were actually living lesser lives because they lacked the material goods that I had begun to associate with happiness. But, the conclusion I had arrived at while observing their living situations was hopelessly wrong and lacking in perspective. On that trip, I met people who had little by our standards, but they were still generous and full of love and hope. They basically had nothing, yet they bought four little white girls snow cones, fed my family of six, and hosted us graciously. This serves as a continuous reminder to me that life is precious and beautiful and worth living, and that it is never truly about what car I drive or what phone I use. It’s about loving without borders and sharing moments with people from all walks of life.