{"id":25868,"date":"2023-05-25T15:36:45","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T19:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=25868"},"modified":"2023-05-30T11:10:32","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T15:10:32","slug":"aapi-profile-puspanjali-gurung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/aapi-profile-puspanjali-gurung\/","title":{"rendered":"Puspanjali Gurung \u201924 finds family all over the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

AAPI Heritage Month at Furman<\/a>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Puspanjali Gurung \u201924 remembers her childhood home in South Asia as \u201ca good place to live,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember having fun with my friends and swimming in the nearby rivers, doing the things that a kid would do.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at age 6, she and her family left her birthplace \u2013 a United Nations refugee camp in eastern Nepal \u2013 for the United States. For the Gurungs, it was the last leg of a journey that started in Bhutan nearly two decades before \u2013 \u201ca time of extreme violence,\u201d says Gurung.<\/p>\n

Like many other members of the Lhotshampa, an ethnic group with roots in Nepal, Gurung\u2019s family had lived in the South Asian kingdom for generations until the ethnic cleansing<\/a> policies of the Bhutanese government forced out an estimated 100,000 people <\/a>in the early 1990s. After being denied settlement in India, Gurung\u2019s parents continued west to Nepal and the camp where Gurung and her younger brother were both born.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Puspanjali Gurung \u201924 wears traditional Nepali clothing during the FUISA Fashion Show in November 2021.<\/p><\/div>\n

After settling in the U.S. in 2009, \u201cI\u2019ve definitely kept in touch with where I came from,\u201d said Gurung, who bonded with the Nepali community in Charlotte, North Carolina. \u201cMy parents encouraged that with things like speaking Nepali at home, to try to prevent complete assimilation into the U.S. culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dance, K-drama and curry<\/h3>\n

Gurung, who speaks Hindi as well as Nepali and English, also began practicing traditional Nepali dances, many of which she features on her YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of dances in Nepal,\u201d she said, \u201cand one of my goals is to do each one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s crossed many off her list, including the dances of the Gurung people, the ethnic Nepali group her family identifies with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a dance called Ghatu that I haven\u2019t gotten to do, because it\u2019s very specific to Gurung villages,\u201d she said. \u201cI would have to go to Nepal to learn it. But I\u2019ll get around to that sometime later.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has joined cultural celebrations and festivals wearing the traditional clothing that distinguishes Gurungs from other ethnic groups in Nepal and South Asia. She also relishes watching Korean TV dramas and cooking Asian food, particularly rice and curry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so many different types, but I love my mom\u2019s chicken curry,\u201d said Gurung. \u201cI think sometimes when I go back home, it\u2019s because of that curry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Global and campus families<\/h3>\n

On campus, Gurung has performed in the Furman University International Students Association (FUISA<\/a>) International Dance Festival and International Fashion Show. Working as an admissions social media intern, resident assistant and member of Mosaic<\/a> \u2013 a student group working to bring diverse populations to Furman \u2013 also helped her find a group of \u201cvaluable friends,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Working as a certified nursing assistant at The Woodlands at Furman has \u201chelped me think about if health care in a clinical setting is the right thing for me,\u201d said the public health major. \u201cI know a lot of Asian American students are forced to think of a path right away. It\u2019s definitely been hard for me to take a step back and reflect on what I really want to do instead of what my parents aspire for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s leaning toward a career in health policy or community health, but as she prepares for her senior year, Gurung is spending much of this month, which is also Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month<\/a>, overseas with her family, visiting relatives in Australia and New Zealand. Her ties extend to many of the countries where the Lhotshampa have been resettled by the U.N.<\/a>: In her sophomore year, during a study away trip<\/a>, she had connected with relatives who emigrated to Denmark.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to know you have family in each part of the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, the public health major stays connected to Nepali culture through dance, fashion and curry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":25870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,94,47,61],"tags":[2089],"class_list":["post-25868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-public-health","category-study-away-and-international-education","category-the-furman-advantage","tag-aapi-heritage-month-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}