Chealin’s Visit to Iasi

Chealin’s Visit to Iasi

Following our initiative to have U.S. Fulbright grantees meet Romanian students and academic staff outside their Romanian university, Chealin Won, Fulbright ETA Student at the University of Craiova has recently been in dialogue with first, second, and third years students from "Alexandria Ioan Cuza" University in Iași. Chealin had the opportunity to share her personal narrative of being a "Hyphenated American." With a focus on the diversity of the United States, she shared statistics regarding the most recent racial census and led discussions about national-identity with a framework of the U.S. as an immigrant country. Chealin and the Romanian students then engaged in an open dialogue regarding Romanian identity in regards to the Roma population, what it means to be Romanian, what it means to be Roma, and what it means to live as citizens in a global world with documentation—recognizing the privileges that come from a piece of plastic of a small booklet.