Name	Vanna Marie
Height	5'0
Naionality
Date of Birth
Place of Birth
Famous for

I was born in the boot camps of Thailand in the mid 1980’s, after my mother fled Cambodia due to the Khmer Rouge Regime and the atrocities of the killing fields. As a single mother of two she had no choice but to make the journey to Thailand to keep us safe. Eventually as a result we ended up making our way to the U.S, where we established ourselves on the East side of Long Beach. This is where I would reside and watch the Cambodian community grow over the next several years. As a single parent my mother struggled to give us the same opportunities as everyone else. Times were difficult and to add to stressful time’s people often labeled us as Chinese and treated us very badly. I specifically remember my brother getting bullied every morning when he walked me and my sister to school. I believed we were picked on and disliked by others because we were different. But even though it hurt, I learned valuable lessons from this experience and even more so how to be tolerant and accepting of everyone no matter how different they are.

I had a fairly normal childhood growing up, besides being a Cambodian girl from Long Beach. I would go to school like everyone else and go through normal things that any other teens would go through. It wasn’t until after high school when I found out how hard it is to make it in the real world and how much my mom must have had to struggle to give us what she did.

I worked really hard to provide for myself and my whole family for several years, even supporting my cousins in Cambodia to give them a better life. I believe in helping others and giving back to your family and community. This is what life is about, making a difference in the lives of others. But somewhere through those years I lost myself and got caught up in bad relationships and let the stresses of life get to me. I wasn’t sleeping eating right or taking care of myself the way I should of been and this eventually took a toll physically and mentally.