In less than four seconds I made a decision that would change my life forever. Driving down a dark highway at midnight, lit only by the occasional passing headlights and the fluorescent ice blue cast coming from the screen of my FaceTime Audio call, with the speaker button on, I heard a random, if hopeful, question , from my Uncle Tom's floating voice: "Well, could you be on a flight to Bangkok on Sunday? Me? In the words of any savvy, well-read, novel-loving sixteen-year-old teenager, I answered brightly and wisely, "Yes!" On a fourteen-hour flight to Tokyo and on the six-hour connection to Bangkok, I had a lot of time to think about my summer vacation and subsequent first time out of the country to visit my uncle, but the personal growth I achieved. it was more than I expected. I was elated that we would be traveling all over Thailand, from Chiang Mai to Phuket, south to Phnom Penh and then to Saigon, Vietnam, but I never considered the people. that I would meet. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Receive an original essay Before the end of my stay, my inner orbit had expanded to others, scattered further afield: it now extended to the lovely older couple at Frannie's Ice Cream in Vietnam, who immediately struck up a gentle conversation with me in French when I insecurely muttered some phrases I knew; to the kind-hearted elephant trainer who, atop elephant Wan Pen's head, smiled warmly and, in Thai, said he liked my American accent; to the Italian at the airport who wanted to talk about soccer (or football, as he would say) as much as ask about American politics; to the Cambodian delivery drivers who dutifully kept the 6-pack of Dr. Pepper that Uncle Tom had left them months earlier, waiting to open and share a can with him; to the vibrant Australian group we met in Chiang Mai who were on a non-profit trip to bring feminine products to deprived areas, and many more. But most of all, a special piece of my heart went to stay eternally with a little boy in Cambodia; he couldn't have been more than four years old and slept on a thin, undersized mat on the grimy sidewalk behind his mother's noodle cart. My internal need to help him in that moment, even to give him a pillow or socks, was too overwhelming for me to ever forget. You hear about people on TV, from the mouth of a teacher, you see names printed in bold letters in headlines, but you never consider people on the other side of the world until you're actually there. We are all different, but I discovered that streak of humanity that runs through us all and makes us equal, with care for life, family, love; just people making choices every day with memories as vivid and ambitions as important as my own, these new people I met from countries miles away from mine and how happy they were with simple things. The surreality and complexity of that notion left me stunned. And it blew my mind that the only way this was happening was all because my uncle held out his hand to me. Seemingly always self-sufficient and independent, to me people have always been just that: people. A population of fellow citizens, extras in the background, peers passing in crowded corridors, generalized lives with parallel lines that never intersect with mine. However, my worldview has expanded irreversibly, my Pandora's box has opened wide and new opportunities and questions that truly matter.