A meaningful trip to Silicon Valley

In March, one week after my birthday, I flew to the Bay Area to see my VietHope family, the nonprofit I volunteer with. I did not expect what came next: through the networking, doors opened to Google, Meta, and NVIDIA, and I ended the trip walking through Stanford.

Standing where it is built

I grew up as a small boy in a small town. Back then, names like Google and Meta were things I only saw on a screen.

And then I was standing inside their campuses.

At every stop, the same thought kept coming back to me: the people walking past me build products that billions of people use every day, including the kid I used to be. I kept looking around, trying to take everything in. It felt like a dream I was not supposed to be in, and somehow I was.

Google

Meta

NVIDIA

Stanford

What I took home

I flew back with a camera full of photos, and something harder to put into words. These places stopped being logos on a screen. They became real buildings, full of real people, a few of them not so different from me. The trip made me want to work harder to chase my dream. I can do it!