Text by Alana, a student at Presque Isle Middle School
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After moving to the United States for freedom and to avoid the Vietnam War, my parents had to adapt a lot. They soon found out they had a lot to get used to, including the language.
The first thing my parents noticed was the climate; snow, snow, snow, and more snow. They were used to hot, sunny weather, thunderstorms, and lots of rain. Maine’s summer was like Vietnam’s winter. They came unprepared, with no jackets, ski pants, or mittens, and didn’t know what to do with all the cold, white abundance of snow. When they saw people playing and rolling around in the cold powder, my parents thought they were absolutely crazy.
After they got over the “snow amazement” phase, my parents found an over abundance of food. In Vietnam, there was little to eat, steamed rice, vegetables, and whatever they could find for their supper. They never had leftovers; they didn’t have enough food to have leftovers. What was common here was foreign to my mother and father. Potatoes are extremely common here, but my mother had never heard of the word “potato” until she moved to the County. My mother and father did have sweet potatoes, but they were the size of a twelve year-old’s fist. It was normal to eat only lunch and dinner in Vietnam. “Only the rich people ate breakfast,” my mother said.
My parents are now nail artists in Presque Isle. In Vietnam, they did other, more strange things that we don’t do here. My mother had to herd five water buffalos, and my father worked in rice and peanut fields. They both got little pay on some days, no pay on others. My father was a teenager before he could afford a bicycle. It was the easiest way to get around other than walking. Vietnam didn’t have any paved roads like the United States and my parents couldn’t afford to buy shoes, so walking made their feet bleed and dirty. They had to walk three miles everyday to and from school and work. My mother was twenty-one when she first drove a car, about a year after she had my older sister in the United States.
Other than shoes, there were a lot of things that my parents did not have, like an indoor toilet. My parents used an outhouse in Vietnam. When my mother and father were young, their houses were made of wood and had a thatched roof. My grandmother cooked on a fire pit and got water from a well. My parents raised chickens for money and for meat. They kept them in the house; free to wander where they wanted.
Since Vietnam didn’t have ambulances, if someone were to have an emergency and needed medical attention, the injured person had to ride on someone’s back. That person would run to the nearest hospital. Or someone would leave the injured person, quickly bike to a hospital, bring back a doctor, and they person would quickly ride back. If one had money, you could buy and ride a motorcycle to the hospital.
When my mother wasn’t working, she enjoyed riding the buffalos she tended. She liked to pick flowers in a local field, and watch the clouds go by. Growing up, my mother didn’t have a TV or toys. She grew up poor and moved to seek a new life in the United States of America.