User:Palcorn02/AI Yoke Yip

Ai Yoke Yip (Born September 13 1980 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)- A competitive swimmer and Olympic hopeful in Atlanta in 1996. Yip was born into a conservative Malaysian Chinese family and has two sisters. She moved to the United States in 1996 at the age of 15 to attend The Bolles School in Jacksonville, FL to train as a professional swimmer.

== Accomplishments

Ai Yoke made several record breaking accomplishments and specialized in her backstroke technique. She won a National competition for the backstroke in 1994 beating out all of the competitors from her country. This afforded her the chance to go to the US and train as a competitive swimmer while keeping up with her studies. While at The Bolles School Ai Yoke broke the 100 Meter Back Stroke for Malaysia in 1997 at Auburn University in Alabama, her future husband was attending the University as a Freshman at the time, ironically they would not meet until years later under different circumstances.

== Life after Swimming

After graduation from Bolles, Ai Yoke moved back to Asia to attend Webster University at Cha'am, Thailand where she studied Psychology and tried to adjust to a less competitive lifestyle, at this time she immersed herself in studies of human behavior and began chatting online to remedy her lonliness. In 2002 Ai Yoke decided to go back to the states to complete her degree from Webster at the main campus in Webster Groves, MO, during this period she began chatting with her future husband Peter, who was now back in his native St. Louis attending St. Louis University where he was studying Aerospace. In 2004 Ai Yoke graduated from Webster with a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology and a Minor in Management.

Ai Yoke and her husband moved to Phoenix, AZ in 2007 and had their daughter Noelle in November of 2008. The family has since relocated and now live in the Seattle, WA area where they fit in quite well. Ai Yoke enjoys shopping and bargain hunting and is an avid animal lover; she wants to own a farm some day where she can keep dozens of stray dogs and have a pet pig.

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