Di Minh, my mom, my mom's friend Di Minh Nguyet, and I flew up to Hue today. My mom grew up in this capital city of Thừa Thiên - Huế province, Vietnam. I can tell that she was a little bit nervous about this leg of the trip, afterall, it has been 50 years. We pretty much spent the whole day hanging out at Di Minh's place before catching our flight later in the afternoon.
I am happy to say that I'm doing a pretty good job speaking my native tongue here. People are surprised that I am able to speak so well, considering that I am a Việt Kiều, which is the Vietnamese person who left his country and has returned for a visit. This term can be used in a very derogatory manner, but not so in my family. I have to give kudos to my mother for forcing me to speak Vietnamese at home when I was growing up, because if I didn't have that foundation, there would be absolutely no way I could communicate with my cousins here today. I know that my Vietnamese is not very eloquent, but being able to contribute to the conversation as well as crack jokes, is pretty darn good. Every so often, I'll have to pause to find vocabulary, but for the most part, I am able to get by. My cousins are very amused by my tales of Vietnamese life in America. Below is a quick little clip of a story I told them about when I enrolled in Vietnamese school.
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I'm so glad you were able to communicate with our cousins. No matter what language it is or where you are at, you always seem to make people smile and laugh! I think I would have been on the more quieter side...scard of speaking.
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