Undergraduate / Essay for Yale Young Global Scholars summer program [6]

Hi! I'm currently applying to the summer program Yale Young Global Scholars and I'd like to have some feedback on my main essay. Yale Young Global Scholars is a summer program which provides enrichment for high school students. The admission is also really competitive, so I really want my essay to be the best it can be.

The prompt was:
Please decribe the factors that have most influenced you and your hopes and dreams. How have they shaped you?

Also, I'm not a native English speaker, so there might be a few grammatical/structural mistakes.
And I propbably won't keep the title:)

A Tiny Clay Pot

"I always forget you're Chinese!" said one of my friends as we were comparing which one of us got the most tanned over the summer. I didn't reply, just laughed. But deep down, I knew the answer : that's because I always forget as well.

Only twelve months old, I had already traveled 11 544 kilometers to come to live here, in Canada. Before travelling oversea, I lived in Yichun, China. I was a baby without a family. The orphanage that picked me up had no idea of who I was; they knew nothing about me. But I, as a baby, could grasp a part of truth about my life. I had survived and had to do it again.

It's only one year later that luck, or fate, struck me and my soon to be parents. I was yet again torn from the roots I had just began to grow. But somewhere in my heart, I must have known it was only for the best, because from what my parents tell me, I was mostly a happy baby. Two loving parents and a witty nerdy boy would later become my family.

My journey didn't quite stop there. The place where I live is far from cosmopolitan with its homogeneous culture. Instead of seeking comfort in it, I wanted more. I wanted to see and explore the experience of immersing in a new culture, like I once did before. I was craving that feeling and traveling was perfectly fulfilling that role. Traveling has taught me so many things that school and friends and family couldn't.

I'll always remember one unique moment in one of the Mexican villages we visited. My family and I were walking when we saw a group of Maya girls. They noticed us as well, but they also saw another mexican girl: me. One of the girls kindly approach us and gave me a pottery pot. She offered me the tiny clay pot as she thought I was one of them.¸I thanked her, silently. She then realized that we might had some similar physical traits, but we didn't share the same cultural background, which only sparked curiosity between us. I wanted to know more about how she and her family lived. In return, she showed me how they cook their meals. It truly fascinated me to discover a different way to live and see things. I never stopped nourishing that interest and never will.

I think we all have to look further than the skin tone, ethnicity and religion. As I seeked to understand other cultures, I realized that I am Chinese, even if I sometimes forget it. I am Chinese and Canadian, but also a human of this world.