User:Milescondon

In Ireland in the 1600s, penal laws were enforced, which disenfranchised the majority of the population. The laws victimized the followers of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland as non-Anglicans had their civil rights suppressed by the British. This resulted in the mass exodus of Irish, especially from the province of Ulster, to many countries including the United States. They settled on the east coast, mainly in New York, Boston, and Chicago. My great grandfather and his family chose Chicago. It was difficult for Irish immigrants and my family was no exception. Aside from the racism and anti-Catholic bigotry they faced, there was very little money to go around. My great grandfather was politically and social conservative, and worked in a factory, which is where he had my grandfather on my father’s side. Shortly after my grandfather was born, they moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin. After enlisting in the air force for 6 years, my grandfather went back to Green Bay to go to school and become a lawyer. This is where he met my grandmother, a native Wisconsinite, and then had my aunt and father. As my great grandfather did, my grandfather raised my dad and aunt socially and politically conservative. This instilled many traditional Midwestern value orientations upon him, which he has tried to instill on me and my siblings. A particularly Midwestern value would be a belief in the essential equality of all people (Midwesterners tend not to favor rigid social or economic hierarchies, which actually may be a result of the Protestant belief that all people can access God in their own way, that they don't need an intermediary force such as the Catholic Church). However, when my grandfather left my grandmother, my father began to seriously doubt those values from his upbringing, and that also fueled his desire to get away to other places and other viewpoints. As a result, he hitchhiked to Alaska when he was 18, where he began to develop his own political and social liberal ideals. He also became interested in Eastern philosophy, which greatly impacted his way of thinking and life, as well as mine. It influenced him enough to go to university in Hong Kong, where he worked and learned Mandarin, and where he eventually met my mother.

Italian immigration in the United States began in the 1880s and was at its height between 1900 until 1914 when WWI made travel impossible. Immigration was mostly caused by the promise of a better life without the low wages and high taxes of Italy. These immigrants were also treated with prejudice and racism. Their willingness to work long hours with lower wages rivaled the Irish in the unskilled work industry, which caused many problems with the groups. My mother’s grandfathers were both these types of workers. They raised my grandfather and grandmother socially and politically conservative. My grandmother was not expected to achieve anything except for getting married and having children, and this idea of a woman’s role was passed down to my mother. Despite their conservative upbringings, my grandparents raised my mother politically and socially liberal. This led my mother to all kinds of experimentation with other viewpoints and lifestyles, some of which was good and some of which was unhealthy. Some of the good experimentation was her artwork, which she developed under the artistic influence of her father, who, aside from working as a teacher, occasionally sold his own art. However, she also experimented with cigarettes and alcohol, which led her to emphasize the importance of responsibility on me and my siblings. Her liberal upbringing also gave her a strong desire for excitement and adventure, which led her to leave her home to go to Hong Kong. She had an opportunity to go to Wales to study textiles, but decided to go to Hong Kong instead because she thought that she’d never go there alone. She then met my father and moved back to the United States shortly after my sister was born in Taiwan. In Ireland in the 1600s, penal laws were enforced, which disenfranchised the majority of the population. The laws victimized the followers of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland as non-Anglicans had their civil rights suppressed by the British. This resulted in the mass exodus of Irish, especially from the province of Ulster, to many countries including the United States. They settled on the east coast, mainly in New York, Boston, and Chicago. My great grandfather and his family chose Chicago. It was difficult for Irish immigrants and my family was no exception. Aside from the racism and anti-Catholic bigotry they faced, there was very little money to go around. My great grandfather was politically and social conservative, and worked in a factory, which is where he had my grandfather on my father’s side. Shortly after my grandfather was born, they moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin. After enlisting in the air force for 6 years, my grandfather went back to Green Bay to go to school and become a lawyer. This is where he met my grandmother, a native Wisconsinite, and then had my aunt and father. As my great grandfather did, my grandfather raised my dad and aunt socially and politically conservative. This instilled many traditional Midwestern value orientations upon him, which he has tried to instill on me and my siblings. A particularly Midwestern value would be a belief in the essential equality of all people (Midwesterners tend not to favor rigid social or economic hierarchies, which actually may be a result of the Protestant belief that all people can access God in their own way, that they don't need an intermediary force such as the Catholic Church). However, when my grandfather left my grandmother, my father began to seriously doubt those values from his upbringing, and that also fueled his desire to get away to other places and other viewpoints. As a result, he hitchhiked to Alaska when he was 18, where he began to develop his own political and social liberal ideals. He also became interested in Eastern philosophy, which greatly impacted his way of thinking and life, as well as mine. It influenced him enough to go to university in Hong Kong, where he worked and learned Mandarin, and where he eventually met my mother.

Italian immigration in the United States began in the 1880s and was at its height between 1900 until 1914 when WWI made travel impossible. Immigration was mostly caused by the promise of a better life without the low wages and high taxes of Italy. These immigrants were also treated with prejudice and racism. Their willingness to work long hours with lower wages rivaled the Irish in the unskilled work industry, which caused many problems with the groups. My mother’s grandfathers were both these types of workers. They raised my grandfather and grandmother socially and politically conservative. My grandmother was not expected to achieve anything except for getting married and having children, and this idea of a woman’s role was passed down to my mother. Despite their conservative upbringings, my grandparents raised my mother politically and socially liberal. This led my mother to all kinds of experimentation with other viewpoints and lifestyles, some of which was good and some of which was unhealthy. Some of the good experimentation was her artwork, which she developed under the artistic influence of her father, who, aside from working as a teacher, occasionally sold his own art. However, she also experimented with cigarettes and alcohol, which led her to emphasize the importance of responsibility on me and my siblings. Her liberal upbringing also gave her a strong desire for excitement and adventure, which led her to leave her home to go to Hong Kong. She had an opportunity to go to Wales to study textiles, but decided to go to Hong Kong instead because she thought that she’d never go there alone. She then met my father and moved back to the United States shortly after my sister was born in Taiwan. My family had settled down in Safety Harbor. FL when my twin brother and I were born, and that is where we stayed until I was 9. I liked living in Florida. There was always something for me to do or somewhere for me to go. However, my family never had much money, and my parents felt the public schools couldn’t provide a safe enough environment. I remember my dad coming home saying “I have to get out of this place” when he one of his students was killed by another student over a petty argument. So, they decided to go to an international job fair to see if there were any offers, and there were.

When I was nine years old, my family moved to Rotterdam, The Netherlands. I didn’t know it at the time, but it really was the best thing for my family. My parents earned more money (both teaching), and Holland was a good place to grow up. It was safe and the people were generally friendly, which gave me the opportunity to explore and be independent. It also gave us the opportunity to visit a lot of countries and experience different cultures first hand. I was able to go to Ireland and Italy and see where my ancestors came from. In Ireland we visited Castle Condon, an abandoned broken down castle that used to be my ancestors before the English stole it, and got to look up the Condon family tree. In Italy, I got to see where my mother’s side of the family was originally from. I remember walking over the canals in the city of Venice to get to a small Italian restaurant, and eating gelato while seeing Michelangelo’s David. I was also able to travel to many more places and do a lot of things I would have never been able to in my life if I hadn’t lived there. I saw the Mona Lisa and Eiffel Tower in France, gotten lost at midnight in Luxembourg looking for a place to stay the night, and skiing in the Alps in Switzerland. After two years of travel and school, my parents decided to move to Taipei. They said it was like “winning the lottery”. Taipei American School paid their teachers more than average and was one of the top international schools in the world. I loved living in Taiwan, and I adopted many aspects of Taiwanese culture into my own. I was also able to experience other Asian cultures aside from Taiwanese. The most memorable of these experiences was when I went to Cambodia. I helped build homes for the impoverished Cambodians, visited the genocide museum at Toul Sleng, and played with children at an AIDS hospice. My three trips to Cambodia changed my life tremendously. It was the first time I had smelt death. I had never really experienced death, war, or especially genocide before. I heard stories about the Khmer Rouge smashing the heads of babies into trees and then tossing them aside in a mass grave, or about how they would separate families so the individual had no relationships other than the one they have with the government. Walking around and talking to the people about what they went through forced me to realize the seriousness of hatred. I also realized this when going through Vietnam War museums. I saw the underground dens the Vietnamese used to hide from American soldiers, as well as torture techniques used on American POWs in prisons. I began to question the validity of my anger at relatively trivial matters in my everyday life. Since then, I have been a strong advocate of peace, including setting up a vigil at my school after 9/11.

In retrospect, I find that although I gained a lot living overseas, I also lost a lot as well. With every country I lived in and with every year that passed, I found it harder and harder to answer the question, “Where are you from?” I’m not from Taiwan but I’m really from the US either. Half my life was spent in the US, and the other half was overseas. Because of this, I feel that I have lost my sense of home. There is no one place that I have always been in or attached to. I have been called a citizen of the world and a third culture kid. I have seen a lot, and every experience I have had has helped me grow and mature into the person I am today, such as moving back to the US to go to UF. There is a completely new culture here that is relatively unknown to me. I do things a lot of people here consider unusual, just as a lot of the things people here do I consider unusual. Just like I had to get used to Taiwanese culture or Dutch culture when I moved there, I have to get accustomed to American culture once again.