My name is An. An Thi Hanh Trinh. Or in Vietnamese, it is written as Trịnh Thị Hạnh An.
I am a Vietnamese. My national identity is something I always proud of, and want to show it to the international community which I am living in.
And I live at Pearson. Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific, a place contains 160 students from 73 different countries.
So, what is the most transformative experience you got at Pearson?
People repeatedly ask me this question, again and again. Pearson brings to me so many new places to wander, Pearson in me is so much more than just one word.
Pearson is talking in McL dayroom in front of the cozy fireplace and cuddling on the long couch which created from several tiny chairs, is walking down to the Philosophy room on a slippery road and looking at the red tide making the whole floating building shake and creak, is the snowy day that every teacher has to stop their car at the top of the hill and walk down to the College in the ice, is noodle bowl, Thai curry and Asian-plus bonding, is the long line every ice-cream day, is the flu epidemic all year around.
Pearson to me is the smell, the taste, the touch, the look, the sound. And more than that, it is a feeling of somewhere very close to heart.
But what is the most important of all? What is the one thing that changes me the most?
Visual Arts, indeed.
I came to Pearson with no prior experience of painting. I took classes f drawing, like realistic still-life for a year at home for the college entrance exam.
The first day I came to Visual Arts class, my world is opened up.
What a canvas is. What oil painting is. What the differences between oil and acrylic paintings are. How to draw with watercolor and how much water is enough.
The beauty of colors. How they can mix and blend together.
How different people look at the world differently and describe it differently to others.
How to relieve stress and do what I love.
like a pine tree 