and sarah russ is a national communicator, thanks to all of you for being here. myra, i want everyone to really have an understanding of where refugees are coming from and while no stories are the same, unbelievable struggle and hardship are really common themes. paint us a picture if you will of your life before arriving in the u.s. from myanmar. where are you from, where did you grow up? >> 30 year story, to make it short. i was born in eastern burma, it is literally where we call jungle. it's not just that. it's a location which is very remote. and it's in the location where the burmese troops as well as the union troops also sometimes fight with each other, in and around our village. so we are in the situation where we literally had to flee. i was an internally displaced person in my own country. and i was internally displaced for more than a decade. i eventually ended up between the thailand burma border. so basically, i had to come to the border because of the persecution that perpetrated by the mee burmese troops. what did they do? they burned our houses o