Lilly Lee on Growing up Chinese, Peace Corps in Botswana, Electrical Engineer

Lilly Lee loves gardening. 

She took time off after receiving her degree in Electrical Engineering to join the Peace Corps. She spent time in Botswana where she was able to teach engineering to high schoolers and made life-long friendships.

When she returned, she received a second major as a physical therapist. She worked at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria, Oregon until she needed extensive back surgery  due to ankylosing spondylitis.

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Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

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Jan Johnson  00:01

Hello, listeners. Welcome to women of the Northwest. This is episode 31. I have with me today, Lily Lee, who I've known for a number of years because she's a physical therapist that helped me through with a bunch of ailments and as well as my son Jed and some other people who like being around her because she's just so much fun. And a great smile. Hi, Lilly. Hello. So we had a sunshiny day you were out in your garden planting things. I thought tomatoes. What else do you have out there?

Lilly  00:43

I am some peonies and some new dogwood tree that I got from the class of Soil and Water District. 

Jan Johnson  00:54

Oh, yeah. Where they having a plant sale?

Lilly  01:00

 They were they were having a native Oregon plant sale.

Jan Johnson  01:04

Oh, how did I miss that?

Lilly  01:05

I don't know. I was fortunate. You probably have all the plants already.

Jan Johnson  01:12

No where else to plant? I have so many.

Lilly  01:17

Well, they had ferns and Oregon irises.

Jan Johnson  01:21

Oh, yeah. I love those too. Yeah. Yeah. Have little purple irises the Japanese Iris coming up. Now they're really pretty.

Lilly  01:30

Well, mine making an propagate? I'll give you some. 

Jan Johnson  01:33

And then the slugs. Oh, my impatiens.

Lilly  01:38

Oh, yeah, slugs are really at it  this year,

Jan Johnson  01:41

and the dahlias I am covered my dahlias and weeded out all of the many weeds in my planter boxes and dahlias are coming up but they're all nibbled away.

Lilly  01:52

I know. I've been doing this little routine at night because my my friends told me that I can work out my plants at night and pick off the slugs as they are eating my plant and I went out there and by golly, that's what they were doing right on the blossoms on my Lupin. They were right on out because one of them had just fallen off and I was just waiting for this bud to bloom. And then I see like there are some nibbles and it's just gonna fall over that night. I saw it I got him.

Jan Johnson  02:29

And no more. They just toss him out into the woods, or did he actually destroy him?

Lilly  02:36

I think I've been doing it a barbaric way. Reminds me of medieval times. I either stab them with a twig or I put them in a bucket and pour salt on them.

Jan Johnson  02:55

Go die die.

Lilly  02:57

Doesn't that remind you of medieval times? Yeah, pouring hot oil on people trying to enter the castle and stabbing them with the long spear

Jan Johnson  03:07

lengths we go to protect our plants.

Lilly  03:13

It'd be terrible when you later find out that slugs are sentient beings.

Jan Johnson  03:17

Yeah, yeah. Well, anyway. Where'd you grow up?

Lilly  03:23

I grew up in Seattle, Washington.

Jan Johnson  03:25

We just Is that where you were born or? You just

Lilly  03:30

No that's where I was born. My parents built a brick house. And I just remember being in the crib in the basement as they were making this house. So yeah, and it was in a very multicultural neighborhood. So that was pretty interesting.

Jan Johnson  03:57

What other cultures were in?

Lilly  04:00

Well, we had Filipino neighbors and we were good friends. They had kids that were same age as myself and my brother and younger and then another family down the street had adopted a little girl from Korea. And there were there was an African American family on the end of the street.

Jan Johnson  04:28

You had all brands.

Lilly  04:31

Yeah, that's true. And we had some elderly elderly neighbors too. Yeah,

Jan Johnson  04:44

yeah. And so

Lilly  04:48

I meant well, there were I didn't mention they're also white neighbors, but they didn't have kids really. So I just mentioned the kid part at Then my friend who's from Korea was adopted by a Caucasian. Yeah. Then she had nephews that were over there too that were younger, a little younger than us. But 

Jan Johnson  05:14

Were your parents first generation to the states are where they were they born here? You

Lilly  05:23

know, my father was not born here. He was from China. But his grandparents were in the United States. And my great, well, they would be my great grandparents. Well, my great, great grandfather was an interpreter in San Francisco, before great grandparents and kind of lost the history between those, those two generations. But then there was the generation that was skipped from my grandfather because he died on his 40s in China.

Jan Johnson  06:05

Oh, okay. Yeah. So did you did your parents speak Chinese in your home? When you're a grown up? Or do you? Are you dual Ling?

Lilly  06:18

A bilingual? Are you bilingual? No. Well, I would say I'm not very proficient at Chinese. There's different dialects. Right. And my family has a rural dialect. But it's a big province. Well, it's in the Guangdong Province. And they speak Thai shot. Thai Thai language. Okay, twice Chinese. And my mother came from there as well. My father went back to China to find a bride. And I think that was like the, the way things went back then. And I'm learning that probably. They i Well, I think my dad probably came in the maybe in the 1940s. I think. And I'm kind of remember I well, I don't know, I'm not I can't remember. I don't know, when my great grandparents were here.

Jan Johnson  07:25

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So yeah, that was the culture of your family, and then the culture of your neighbors that you grew up with. So that was kind of fun.

Lilly  07:36

Or True, true. And I. So I do, it's good to have ya. Because although we have, you know, parents who speak a different language, we didn't become proficient in them. I don't. I don't know that my Filipino friends actually spoke Filipino language. They, they, they probably knew their Tagalog like, I knew the Chinese language. Probably could understand it if I heard it. But yeah, there's not really good at speaking. Yeah. 

Jan Johnson  08:15

Yeah. Because you didn't mean to. 

Lilly  08:17

Yeah, you need practice. I think my mother didn't want us to have a accent when we spoke English. So that was one of the reasons why we didn't learn or speak Chinese in the house. Much. But as we got a little older, she didn't want us to learn Chinese. And we had this a Chinese teacher come to our house, but didn't think we were good students, my brother I and I didn not think he wants to teach us after a while.But there were other families who took their kids to the International District. There was Chinese language school on Saturdays there. And I don't know why. I didn't really know about that until much later. I wasn't involved with that. But I knew that later that they had that. And that would have been kind of fun, actually, because I grew up really not knowing very many Chinese people until I was in middle school. All right. Yeah. They just really didn't didn't know any

Jan Johnson  09:35

yet because you just weren't around. Yeah, no, anybody so interesting.

Lilly  09:39

Well, they weren't in. They weren't in my neighborhood. And usually just, you know, end up playing with people that are in your neighborhood

Jan Johnson  09:49

and your parents didn't hang out with other Chinese people.

Lilly  09:54

No, not. Well, my parents were divorced. So Maybe we didn't do as many things as other Chinese families did. But I ended up in doing a lot of Chinese community things when I was in middle school because I had this well, she was the principal of the, of the middle school and she was Chinese. Her name is Cheryl Chow. And she was recruiting Chinese girls from the schools because she is very familiar with the school district. She goes to different elementary schools and sees the who's the upcoming. Jamie's students, you can become part of her Chinese drill team. There was an trainees drill team in the community, it was called Seattle, Seattle Community Chinese drill team. And that's where I first met a lot of Chinese people. And I just thought, wow, this is more Chinese people than I've ever seen. So I felt like it was a little bit different, because a lot of them already knew each other and probably lived in neighborhoods where there were a lot of Chinese people. So I felt like wow. But yeah, it was really interesting. And I did not join the drill team until I was in middle school. And she was the principal at that middle school. But she came to my elementary school when I was in the sixth grade. And I think she actually came to my home and asked my mother, whether I could join the drill team or not. Yeah, but my mother was very ill then. So I didn't do that. And then in middle school, I guess I was, I was free to do it. My mother had passed away before I got into middle school. So then, that's how I ended up. trying out for the drill team. It was, it was kind of funny, because what was the vid is marching. And they have precision drills. And if you ever see like marching band, and they do these turns, and yeah, they have, I was in marching band. Yeah. So they have a captain and that's usually the senior person on the drill team. And they yell out the commands and everybody turns their head at the same time and, and stomps their left foot, and as they turn, but it took a lot of coordination. And they want a lot of war awards and grades. But my friend Susie, and I, I don't know if we were that interested in being in the marching part. We ended up liking being in the music part. So she played the big drum and I played the I ended up playing the snare drum. I think it first started out with the symbols. And we've probably before that we were flag bearer. So the flag bearers don't have to do as many maneuvers you just fall behind and hold the flag, then you just stay in line with the person next to you.

Jan Johnson  13:53

Tell me about later after you graduated from high school, is it and what time in your life? Did you join the Peace Corps?

Lilly  14:01

Oh, so this is also a very interesting time. Because I went to school during the time when they were busing. So they bust students from the north into Seattle into the south end. And then for middle school, or junior high school. And then when you go to high school you are the people that were in the south end. were bused to the north end. Yeah. And so then, the people that had to travel on this long bus rides to go to school when they were younger, got to stay in their neighborhoods when they were older to go to school and learning. Yeah, but I decided that I did not want to do that. I didn't know I want to take a long bus ride when there was a high school, five blocks away from my house. That was a good school and I. And I just thought, No, I don't think I want to do that. And maybe that is the first time actually, that I made up my own mind about something Oh, like in my in my life that I thought, No, I, I just don't want to do that. And then I made a way so that I did not have to do that by applying to a humanities program that this high school in your Oh, I house had, and they only had so many spots. But I guess I think there's only 30 people in the class. So. And they had different classes that actually that was really great time learning different things, different cultural things that I probably would not have even noticed or known about. Okay, that didn't seem like it was a normal school curriculum. Uh huh. Yeah. Because we learned about law and society and different different cultural things like architecture, and music from different instruments. And I did not grow up until like learning to play an instrument. I did not know what these instruments sounded like. And so the tests were actually kind of hard because I was not used you. You didn't have the experiences. No, I did not have the experience. You know, when they played this music, this was the oboe or playing this music. And this is the clarinet. Yeah. And that's how we were tested. And I just thought, wow, this is a really interestin g class. Yeah, because he would play the music. And then we would recognize the sound that this is right from this instrument, but it's not like you hear it all the time, I would probably recognize guitar, but I do not think guitar was on the exam. So it was it was a really good program. And I think that, that really broaden my scope of what I knew the world and what was out there thinking

Jan Johnson  17:29

broader. What can you do more broad

Lilly  17:32

here are just that there were different things out there that were exciting and beautiful, versus just what I knew for my neighborhood. And, but everything I think growing up was kind of, I just took it as it was something new, like the drill team was new. I never knew how to play the drums or, you know, I didn't really know about the costumes that we or for the right event. And yeah, these costumes, I believe had they originated either ever from Taiwan, but I'm not quite sure Taiwan or I'm not sure. But they were original. Yeah, they were not made in the United States there.

Jan Johnson  18:30

Yeah. What else? So how did you get into the Peace Corps?

Lilly  18:34

Where did you go? So that also had to do with my high school? Yeah. Because I go to my physics class. And I just remember the moment that I saw this piece of paper on the table, we had it a tiered class, which is kind of fun for high school, because you usually don't have a tiered classes, usually just one level floor. And I remember I saw was on the front table, and I went to sit down, I was there before other people. And there's a flyer that said, here's the best job you'll ever know. It's the toughest job you'll ever love. And I read it and I thought, Oh, I'm, I'm gonna do that. After college. I'm going to do that. Yeah. And it was about helping people in developing countries. And it just sounds so exciting. And I just thought, Oh, I really want to do that. And that's how I remembered when I went to college. Hey. graduate in electrical engineering. Hearing? Yeah, well known fact. Yeah, I, I guess I, I really liked the sciences. And my cousins were had graduated from engineering. And so I felt like, well, this was a known view. It was a known field, I think because I, I had known people in the family that went this route. Yeah. And I think that's how other people are, you know, if they have known physicians, or known lawyers and their family that they might also go that route. I

Jan Johnson  20:46

think that's how I ended up being a teacher.

Lilly  20:50

Or you're a good teacher, for sure. But I would not say that I was very delighted to be an engineer, and ended up pursuing. That's right. That's not what I ended up pursuing. So I remember that if I made some good friends going through it, because it was very tough course to go through engineering. And there was just as there were some good times though, during intramural sports, and just I guess the hardest part was probably just taking the exams. And

Jan Johnson  21:34

yeah, it was

Lilly  21:38

too fun. But, um,

Jan Johnson  21:41

so you ended up in Botswana, right. So it has some lifelong friends,

Lilly  21:47

right. So it seems like every stage of life, you meet people that you can really connect with. And that's, that's what's fun about life. And I decided after I got my degree in engineering, before I actually got my degree, I was going to pursue that dream that I had of going for the toughest job I'd ever love. And my so I decided that I was not going to go to grad school right away. And I was not going to pursue a job in engineering that moment, because it was still kind of thinking about whether I really wanted that or not. And also, I just want to do this. I just felt like, this was the time adventure. Yeah, I needed that adventure in my life I had been setting for so why and it was, I needed to find out more about what I wanted, like, what did what was I? What did I really want to do in life. And so when I applied Yeah, I applied before I graduated, just, it takes a while actually to get accepted, okay. And I just put in, you put in which countries that you think you might want to go to or you accept going to you, and I want you improve my chances. So I picked a continent of Africa, because I thought, well, that is a place that probably would never go to on my own just to go there. And then, also, they had the most Peace Corps volunteers, probably in Africa. So then you put down the things that you could do. Yeah, or what you can qualify to do and the P score. So I put down of course, my major and that's, and I got a spot. I just couldn't believe it. I mean, actually, I expected that I would get a spot because I did not think that Peace Corps rejected people. Yeah. And but I don't know, I think that is a more selective process than than anything because you have to be very healthy. Yeah.

Jan Johnson  24:34

So what did you once you got? There was a long flight to get there. Once you got there with how to what did you end up

Lilly  24:41

doing? Oh, so before I went there, this is a very interesting and funny thing too. It actually took me a little while to get it accepted because there was a holdup, and I didn't really I didn't know why there was a holdup in getting into the Peace Corps and And she's when I called, they said, Oh, because you had this hip bursitis. And in your medical history that you put down and I said, Oh, okay, so then I need to go to a doctor to get it cleared that I could go to Botswana, or be in the Peace Corps without having a problem with this him. And so then I did that and back in, then I did get a call. And they said, Oh, you're going to Botswana? Do you want to go and you would be teaching in their technical wing, because you have an engineering degree, you will be teaching electronics and technical drawing. And I thought, Really, wow, was more than I thought I can do there. So I, I just was so happy. I said, Yes. And then I decided to ask, and were is Botswana.

Jan Johnson  26:03

Because you have Google in front of you.

Lilly  26:06

I had not heard of Botswana before. So then I had this world map on my wall. And I looked at it and there was Southern Africa. So I had a plan. And when I got there, it was, it was it was pretty fun. We had a staging in Philadelphia with the other people in the group that was going and I had another little patriotic adventure there, I ran over to see the Liberty Bell and nearly missed the bus and go to the airport. That was pretty funny. So then, the I fell, fell asleep while going from the airport being picked up at the airport to go to the trading site, or you spend seven weeks there, to learn the language and get some practice teaching. And that was actually I thought everything was was I wouldn't say there's everything was coming at roses, but I felt like wow, what a really couldn't fit in position, because I'll get to teach something that I wish Oh, yeah. And I always wanted to try out teaching at a high school level and being a basketball coach. So I got to do those two things there. And I had some really spectacular students that that gave me a view of teaching that was like, it was really rewarding. I felt like, wow, these students are really can do well, yeah, yeah. I mean, not that I didn't think that they couldn't do well, I just didn't have the experience of teaching a class. And they were just soaking it all up. And we were sharing cultural things. Because one of the goals of Peace Corps is also to share different culture of being an American being an American and learning about their culture as they learned about you. And you're here. And if we had a little I word though one time, and I said, Okay, if you all do well, on your exams, we can have a pizza party at my house. And we had to make the pizza from scratch. They didn't really know what pizza was at the time. Yeah. And that was funny too. So we got to share that. And then they made a traditional dish of pounded meat. And that was beef was kind of pounded in this. It's like a wood bore to kind of a tall wood ball. So yeah, it was really a good time. Yeah.

Jan Johnson  29:21

And so when you're teaching, though, you were teaching in English? Yes. Yeah. Because that would be a lot of vocabulary. You wouldn't have known in Botswana and

Lilly  29:31

whatever. Right, right, though. Swahili that they were doing are with no Setswana okay. Yeah. And the requirements are that when they go to senior secondary, they are speaking in English I see. And the teacher speak in English to the local teachers that are speaking in English and they have also a Setswana class where They learned their national language I see. I mean, not that they don't know i But yeah, it's probably like the same as we take English here.

Jan Johnson  30:11

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so then he came back and changed majors became a physical therapists,

Lilly  30:19

right. So when I came back, I decided that I was going to go into bioengineering myself, but I was planning to go to grad school. And I had actually been accepted at some universities already, before I went to the Peace Corps. And that was just my backup plan. If I, you know, if I didn't get into the Peace Corps or something, I need to, to keep going. So I had that. And then I decided I was going to defer the bioengineering grad schools because I want to travel for a while after the Peace Corps. So I did do wrong. I bought a well, I didn't have to buy it myself. But the Peace Corps gives you the amount of money that you would need to buy a ticket to fly home. Oh, and from Botswana to Seattle is a very expensive ticket. Yeah. And at that time, you keep by a round the world ticket, where you can stop in different countries, as it was on your route going in the States. Yeah, as long as you are going in the same direction as you go toward a nation, right. So I decided that I wanted to do that and delay my bioengineering grad school. Okay. So I at that point, I had not decided education of life. Yes, the education of life. It, it was quite the adventure. So you got to go to a whole bunch of different countries and some, some I went meet up with my Peace Corps friends, and I also went to Hong Kong and met my dad who was in China at the time. And then we went to China, then now out of China. I went to verify went to CES. I think from there. I was thinking about going to Japan, but I was getting tired and probably should have gone then. But instead I went to I think I flew to Vancouver then and yeah. Met with another Canadian volunteer that had been in. And Botswana always yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, so. Yeah. So I was not thinking about physical therapy, that, and when I came back back to Seattle, I decided that I should really explore whether I really want to get through more engineering or not. I had realized that I really liked working with people. I thought, originally, I wanted to do the engineering so I could help people with engineering overcome their physical disabilities. Oh, and I thought, well, maybe I should get into medicine or something. And then I thought, Oh, that's so long. You know, I thought, ah, but I had my good friend, Debbie. She says, Why don't you try physical therapy? That's kind of sporty, and it's in the medical field. Yeah. I had not even heard of physical therapy at that point. And I thought, Oh, okay. I'll look into it. Yeah. And

Jan Johnson  34:19

so then fast forward, you became a physical therapy and you have lots and lots of people and then you had a metal can medical condition yourself that left you left you leaving your

Lilly  34:35

right. Right. And it's so going back to finding out I had this autoimmune disease. It actually goes back to when I was in high school practically, because I had the hip bursitis Then and Now was the first guys was China that's what it was leading to. All right, I did not know that when you're younger, you just keep going full bore ahead. And I remember that I had a difficult time running cross country because it was I just wasn't, you know, very good at and then and I had this hip pain later. And then I had remember I had this kind of did not realize it at the time that it was sacroiliac pain when I was in college. And you just kept going. And then when I was in PT school, I decided, oh, here, this, I went to the Mayo Clinic, oh, Mayo Clinic for PT school. And I thought, Oh, this is my opportunity. There are so many like good doctors here. And they're so specialized. And I was having some neck pain. And necks actually more neck stiffness than anything else. And I happened actually. Before I went into the Peace Corps, and also, I, it's that's kind of a long story, how I had a little reprieve from it, but then it came back. And it came back before I went to PT school, I almost didn't think I was going to be able to get into PT school because I had this neck problem. Then, because there's a little physical, physical fitness test, or it's not really a test, but there's a physical fitness exam that you you take before you enter the program, even though I was already accepted. We we did that. And I remember the doctor saying, you have to be really fit to be a physical therapist, and I was thinking, I am really fit. It's like, I've just been to two years in Botswana. Yeah. climbed mountains and yeah. And run and jog and all that. And I just thought, why would she say something like that? That was kind of weird. And but then I did have the neck pain. Maybe she saw that I'm not sure. But later on, I went to see the physiatrist because in the PTS are under physical medicine and rehab department, and so that's how I became familiar with that. I thought, Oh, I'm just going to see somebody in that department and see what they say and took a little bit but eventually, actually two times that the first doctor didn't, didn't discover why because it's more it was maybe more musculoskeletal. Maybe just thought I was under stress from studying and

Jan Johnson  38:32

yeah, it just do something the beam.

Lilly  38:35

Yeah. I mean, it could seem rather, you know, like a common thing having a stiff neck. Yeah. So that. That didn't work out on the first one, until I had to a class on examining the cervical spine on the neck, who is a guest speaker and an alumni of the school. And he says, Oh, I shot up my hand. I'm like pretty good at volunteering. Yes, exactly. My neck. So with him, he told me to go back and get another check and say, you know, you have kind of a Do you have a stiff neck? Yeah, it's more than a stiff neck. So eventually, yes. They did get it figured out in that and that it was like losing spondylitis, which I had studied in our class and I thought I do not want that. I think it was in a bit of denial or even if they thought I had it, I felt like oh, I could overcome this that. No, it couldn't possibly be disabled or Yeah, impaired by this. I'm gonna do this a fully active person, I cannot let this hinder my life. So. But my professors, they they knew though what the outcome would be that it's a progressive can be a progressive disease and add some good advice. It's good advice from Dr. Carrier, you said, Well, you should probably try all all sectors of the physical therapy profession because you will not be able to do all of them later on. So yeah, we'd get that experience of having done it all. And then you can just narrow down to the ones that you can do later on. I thought that was really good advice. I did really enjoy doing the inpatient rehab with people who had difficulties enough that they had to stay in the hospital. It wasn't acute care, like a certain surgical, but it was more neurological. So the there had a stroke, or they had head trauma or some neural muscular disease, so or spinal cord injury. And I thought that was really fun. I really enjoyed that. And, but I knew that I probably could not do that as a full time job. Knowing that this huge, usually a teacher, she's really strong.

Jan Johnson  41:52

So yeah, but

Lilly  41:55

being in the local hospital here, I really did get to do everything. I'm all the sectors of physical therapy. I had, in the very beginning, they had a nursing home contract, I did home health. We had hospital patients, and because it's a small, rural hospital, you had neurologic patients, and you had patients that just underwent surgeries for other things and hip replacements, knee replacements and car accidents. Just all kinds of things. Yeah,

Jan Johnson  42:34

yep. Yeah. Well, we are coming close to the end. I'm going to ask you one more question. Okay. You ready? All right. What, what brings you the greatest joy?

Lilly  42:51

Ah, well, there are quite a number of things, but I really enjoy making, like, figuring out someone's problem, and helping them to overcome it. I think that is, that is really finding, that's what I really liked about physical therapy. I mean, I thought it was We're just helping them in some way that it made their life, like so. easier, easier, or better. It's set them on the path that they they, you know, got to go on this good path, or they, you know, were able to get back to what they were doing. Yeah. Or one of my students looked me up after 10 years after the Peace Corps, and I thought, wow, so would you look me up after 10 years? Yeah, and

43:59

you