Someone Watching Over Us

This article is about the re-found connections between Vietnamese adoptees and the orphanage workers who took care of us during such desperate times from the early to mid 1970's. Through various traces to our past, we have found the orphanages where we are from. For many of us, this is as close as we can get to our origins. Even more amazing was meeting the social workers who took care of us more than 30 years ago, familiar faces who we were too young to remember, but very well remember us. It's almost impossible to explain how grateful we are to these beautiful women who seem so familiar. Visiting their houses is the same closeness anyone would share with their own family. Like our very own aunts would, they still want to visit as much as possible, feed us and ask make sure we're okay. Despite the many years that slipped away when we were all sent to our unknown destinies , the meaningful bond we have with the social workers is timeless. [To be continued]

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Nurture versus Nurture

We cannot definitely say what part of us is biological and what part is a product of our environment is, but for some adoptee friends coming back to Vietnam has resolved some of these issues and helped us figure out ourselves. Being able to look at your biological family might answer a lot of questions for who you are, but take this away and then you can only go back to the environment you originally came from. When asking Kai what part of him is Vietnamese, he confidently says that he can relate to how people here share, especially in the family. For Kai, there’s no doubt that he’s willing to share and take care of those around him which is obvious by his generous and friendly nature. What brought Kai back to Vietnam was a gradual process of learning Vietnamese culture, first back in Munich and continues in the present now living in Ho Chi Minh City. Unlike my experience in the US, Kai did not have the same early opportunities to attend adoptee reunions to learn about Vietnam and meet

The Value of A Life

My wife looked up me after checking her phone and I immediately knew something was wrong since she must have had a dozen missed calls in the past hour. I too had a few. It was her mom, her brother, and sister calling one after the other as if they were saying to drop everything and just go. Her grandmother had passed away and she needed to get back to her parent’s place in the countryside as if nothing else needed to be explained. My wife and daughter packed a bag to leave early the next day and I would join later in the evening after finishing work. The next evening I finally arrived at the funeral, I noticed that the immediate family members were all dressed in white robes and wore head wraps that symbolized rank according to the proximity to the deceased as well as age. Other close relatives wore white headbands, the younger children in orange headbands, and everyone else wore dark clothing and black headbands. A funeral band played traditional Vietnamese music with the droni

Crash Course to Living in Vietnam

Everything I ever needed to learn when first coming to Vietnam, I learned from my good buddy Tim Holtan . Before coming back to Vietnam for my first time in 1996, I had lots of questions and luckily Tim was there to answer them. We were also roommates in Hanoi back then so it was good to have him show me the ropes while I got settled in a strange place. While some of these rules to live by might seem insensitive I can only say you have to live here to understand. 1. Don’t ask, just accept it When Tim and I were studying Vietnamese, another student Ong Lou (Mr. Lou)would often interrupt the class excusing himself, “xi xi xin loi” usually asking what everyone deemed as a stupid question like why do Vietnamese shake with 2 hands to show respect? Tim’s response was don’t ask, just accept. While it’s interesting to learn culture and tradition, some things you just gotta accept! 2. Don’t watch them wash the dishes Many times eating Pho or rice at a street stall, I was often told not to

Vietnamese Adoptees Living in Vietnam

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