Student_Voice : Bringing Ohana home

Cho Sua

The author is a student at Seoul Shinyongsan Elementary School.

As our plane headed toward Hawaii and my new international school, I felt proud of myself, but scared at the same time. What if there are bullies in Hawaii? What if I can’t communicate with them?

Full of fear and excitement, I looked out the airplane window as the clear skies turned into palm trees, green grass growing everywhere and small buildings at the edge of water that glowed in the sun.

After a few days of exploring Hawaii, it was the first day of international school. When I stepped in, all eyes were on me. My heart was pounding and my palms were sweating. But it turned out I didn’t have to be worried at all. After the teacher introduced me to the class, two students named Kinsey and Edi came up and said "hi." During the school tour, they told me about a game they liked to play, where you pretend the floor is lava and must escape a dragon while exploring for treasure. Later, during the three-legged race at a school athletic contest, they helped me find a partner when it seemed like I might be left out.

This is what Kinsey said to me every single day: “There is the word 'better,' but no such word as 'badder.' So you just have to be better.”

Kinsey and Edi were my introduction to Hawaii’s “Ohana” culture. You may be familiar with the term Ohana from the movie "Lilo & Stitch" (2002), where a young Hawaiian girl named Lilo befriends a cute but strange creature named Stitch, a genetic experiment from another planet who crash-lands on Earth. She teaches Stitch that “'Ohana' means family. 'Family' means nobody gets left behind.”

In my Hawaii story, I was the creature from another planet. And even before meeting my friends Kinsey and Edi, I felt the Ohana culture. At the airport, when our passports were getting checked, the customs agent asked my sister her age and said, “You have the same birthday as me!” Then he gave my sister a high five. Hawaii is truly paradise, I thought, if everyone is as welcoming and as kind as that customs agent. 

Several days later, I went to the playground with my mom and sister and found three people already there: a young girl with her mom and dad. I was on the monkey bars when her mom came up and asked where I was from, and said that my English was very good. Getting compliments from strangers was something new. It felt heartwarming, like having hot chocolate after staying in the cold for a long time.

Korea is very different. I don’t know if all schools are like this, but in our school, most of the time, the shy and quiet kids are alone. It’s not like others bully them; they just don’t reach out to them. People already have a group of friends. They have a small, close circle of people they care about. In Hawaii, it’s a wide circle. 

In Korea, I stayed in my comfort zone. There was always the risk of being judged by my peers and teachers, and I was afraid. I wanted to be cautious and safe. Should I go up and talk to someone I didn’t know very well? Never. If I didn’t take a chance, I couldn’t make a mistake.

After I came back from Hawaii, I started to come out of my shell. I started to look at my classmates in Korea differently. If I had Ohana, I wondered, how would I show it to them?

Recently, I was talking with my friends at my school in Seoul, and I saw one girl sitting alone during breaktime. I knew she was really shy. During class, when she had to present her work, I struggled to hear her voice. Now she was reading a book, and she looked kind of bored. I thought of speaking to her. If I had Ohana, I would. But maybe she doesn’t want me to? Maybe she would reject me? What if she says, “Please don’t disturb me”? What’s the likelihood that she will be happy? Fifty-fifty?

Ohana means two things. One, that you have to take a risk sometimes if you want to help people. Two, that the likelihood someone will appreciate your efforts is much higher than fifty-fifty. I’d say it’s around 99-to-1.