Culture of one

I have grown up with the stories of my parents, my mom had once shared with us that ever since she was little her family was very poor. Her dad was enrolled in the army and her mom was a stay-at-home mother so they didn’t have a lot of money for food or clothes. My mom has 3 other siblings and they all had to work as a young age to support the financial of the family. And like many other Vietnamese immigrants her family moved to the US with a hope for a better future. My dad who was aborted by his parents when he was 5 and lived with his aunt for his entire childhood. When he was a teenager, he believed that only education will change the life he currently lives in so he studied and earned a full ride scholarship to a university in Germany. They met and married when my dad was a successful man and my mom who was still working to help her family.

Through their experiences in life they taught me that “if I want something I must work for it”, or “if I fail in life I have to stand up on my own feet because there might not be a hand reaching out to me every time I fail”. These are the life lessons that I learned from them and their stories have shape me up as the person who I am today. Through their stories I know that I’m grateful for what I have and not complain about what I don’t have because I know I’m much luckier than a lot of people out there in the world.

I have grown up in a big family where we meet each other every holidays. In my family we celebrate Thanksgiving with turkey and Pho (a Vietnamese noodle soup), we celebrate Christmas with Steak and Rice Vermicelli Noodles (Bun Bo), we celebrate New Year and Chinese New Year, we remember the holidays in the US along with the holidays in Vietnam. With the contradictory of both the tradition and the food I’m experiencing, it helps me become more open to other people no matter who they are and willing to understand their point of view through the lenses of their culture. Without my family I wouldn’t be the person who I am today.