The Last Supper

My sister Nathalie has been keeping up with my Vietnam escapade via Blogged Arteries: The Unrendered Files. She emailed me earlier and said that she "thoroughly and truly enjoyed all the pics and commentary! So do the girls!" I caught her online and filled her in on the areas of the trip that wasn't covered in the blog. She asked me if we had the chance to visit her old elementary school. I responded no, but I'd ask my mom about it. My mom had no idea where the Dong Duc Ba Regina Mundi School was, and furthermore, she didn't know if it still existed. Because of this, the two of us were pretty much convinced that we wouldn't be able to visit this historical landmark in our family. However, with a couple of hundred thousands of (Vietnamese) dollars and a lot of charm, my mom managed to locate this school with the help of a local cab driver.

I wonder how much of Dong Duc Ba Regina Mundi School my sister Nathalie remembers. Above is a vintage photo of her first grade class. Nathalie is the fourth from the left on the top row. Below is a current picture of the exact spot in which her class picture was taken some 35 years ago. The landscape has changed a little and the building has been retrofitted, but the Regina Mundi School employee who let me in confirmed that the orginal chapel is still there, and that the school children's class portraits are still taken at that exact spot next to the chapel.

Later that night, my mom took the whole family to dinner. My cousins said that since this was our last night in Vietnam, I got to pick the place. I didn't have to think hard about this one, as I had a hankering for banh xeo, the Vietnamese crepe. The whole clan gathered up the Hondas and away we scooted down town Saigon to a quaint little restaurant appropriately called "Banh Xeo."

Then energy was very high, and everybody joked around in celebration. Occasionally, there would be glimpses of sadness, especially when my cousin Tram Anh reminded my mom again of how she is forever indebted to my mother for saving her family's life. I stated in an earlier blog that Di Minh's family would be so happy when they received Christmas gifts from my mom. Apparently, I had misunderstood. Tram Anh clarified that these were survival packages.

After the war, Di Minh's family was so hungry that they only had a few grains of rice to feed the family. They were so poor that they didn't have clothes on their backs. If my mom had not left her house to Di Minh's family, the Viet Cong would have forced them into the jungles of Vietnam to die. I could not believe this when Tram Anh recounted this story. It really sounded like something out of an Oliver Stone movie. I never thought that it could happen to my own family, but it did. Tram Anh started to cry when she revealed that she could never forget that day when that first package arrive. That survival kit contained medicine, clothes, toiletry items, and other products that the family could sell at the market. My mom rolled up hundred dollar bills and stuffed them into tubes of toothpaste. She feared sending money, so she hid the cash. Luckily, the package made it Di Minh in one piece. Here I thought my mom was sending Christmas presents, but in actuality, she rescued this whole family. My mom did not wanted tears at this dinner so simply said, "Please! Stop it with the martyr talk! You're making me feel like a boring old saint!" This outburst garnered laughs across the table, and all talk of sadness got squashed.

This dinner ended on a high note with the dê factor kicking in full force. I won't get into the gory details, but let's just say that this girl was so smitten by me that she approached mom and asked for permission to date me! How funny is that? I'll just leave it at that.

They say that whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, well, the same is true for Vietnam!