Feeling the plane slowly rolling onto the runway, I sluggishly got up from my uncomfortable economy-class seat. Yawning as I looked down to find my small purse, the light glinting off the airplane’s tiny windows caught my eyes. Staring at the clear blue skies and picturesque Korean letters, I breathed out slowly.

This was my dream after all. To get through the horrors of high school, get into the university that my parents had been pushing me to get into since I was young, and then…come here.

Here? Here meaning halfway across the world- with nothing but a suitcase, a purse, and a dream swirling in the deepest abyss of my brain? This reality was so risky, the unlikeliness of my dream to be achieved…it was overwhelming. I was the valedictorian of my class; I was accepted into every Ivy school I had applied to, with scholarship. I had left all of that.

But how could I ignore the dream that has been consuming every thought I have had for the past five years? To achieve stardom in Asia? Me, a chocolate girl, in a sea of milk? The chances were low and I knew that, in fact, an invisible siren was going off above me. 

I sighed, pulling the crumpled passport ticket from the back of my jeans as I gripped the purse to my chest tightly. The cool breeze whipped through my long, black hair as I got out of the plane.

Squinting my eyes from the blinding sun, the worries in my heart started melting. That’s right. This is where I am supposed to be. Breathing in once more, I put both feet onto the runway. I am officially in Seoul, Korea.