This is a speech I delivered in my Toastmasters a while back, pretending the audience to be my fellow alumni and students from my alma mater.

In 1978, a family of three arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with 700 dollars to their names, and all their possessions in two suitcases. They knew one woman in the city, the one friend they had made in India when she was passing through and needed a place to rest in-between flights.  Now they were relying on her to put them up for a night or two while they found housing. You could say they were naïve, you could call them foolhardy, but they had aspirations.  The man was going to do his higher studies, and the woman and the one-and-a-half-year-old daughter tagged along.