Adoption from China

My sweet niece is such a joy. My brother and sister-in-law are blessed to have adopted her from China. Children change your life forever, for the better. They make you see things in a whole different light.

I’ve been thinking about my Chinese niece growing up American and wondering how she’ll feel about her connections to China as she approaches adulthood. In fact, I want my own children to appreciate not only the country they live in now but also their Vietnamese heritage.

Recently, a friend sent me an article about how the first wave of adopted Chinese children in America are now young adults seeking their identities. The article talked about how these children have been raised. Some of their white parents incorporated things relating to their Chinese culture into their lives, such as Chinese dance lessons. The adopted Chinese girls who live in larger cities where they were exposed to many cultures seem to embrace their Chinese identity, while the ones raised in a more "white" community don’t. They have been more likely to just want to fit in with their white counterparts.

I can completely relate to this! When we came to the United States, we moved to a town with a very small Vietnamese community. Other than my cousins, I was not exposed to Vietnamese people on a daily basis. We went to ESL school in the summer in order to learn English. We were told by the instructors that if we wanted to speak excellent English, we needed to use it all the time, so we did. In doing that, we abandoned our mother language. I am embarrassed to say that I can no longer speak Vietnamese fluently. Like many kids, we just wanted to fit in. My brother and I often spoke about this - we thought we were white kids. I don't think we fully appreciated our cultural identity until we went away to college.

As I got older, I came to appreciate my culture more, especially after my recent trip to Vietnam. In light of my experience, I am trying to teach my children about my Vietnamese culture and traditions. I don’t want my children to lose their cultural identity. I want my children to be proud and knowledgeable about their entire identity, to be able to appreciate their heritage as they grow up.

A Game of Tennis

Recently, I picked up the game of tennis. It is very popular here in the area that we live. Tennis is a game played with rackets by two (called singles) or four players (called doubles). Players strike a hollow rubber ball covered in felt over a net into the opponent's court.
I started out only to get some exercise, to see if I can get my borderline high-blood pressure down. Now I'm addicted to it. I'm not a very athletic person but somehow this sport brings out the competitiveness in me. Granted, I'm only playing with friends, so it's just for fun, but I really like it.

Information about 'tennis' was retrieve from encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Hoa Anh Đào - Cherry Blossom

I love plants and flowers. I could spend all day at a plant nursery. I should live in Florida or California, where the climates are milder for tropical flowers. Last year, I went to Callaway Garden in Georgia and I spent most of the day at their greenhouse. Some of my favorite flowers are Cherry Blossom (hoa anh dao), Peach Blossom (hoa mai), Plumeria (hoa su) and Bouganvilla (hoa giay).
One of my best childhood memory is visiting my grandmother - bà nội (that's your father's mother) at Tan Son Nhat. We only visited her once a year. My mother would make me dress up in some fancy clothes and we would take a bus out there. I call it a bus because I don't know what else to call it. It looks like an old truck with a covered roof over it. I don't know why we didn't take or moped or car. It seemed like a long trip at the time. Recently, I flew into HCMC and took a cab from the airport Tan Son Nhat to Saigon and it didn't seem that long of a drive - may be because the roads are now paved and it wasn't back then.
My grandmother had this swing out in the front. It was under this HUGE pink bouganville tree (hoa giấy) climbing over the house. She also had banana trees. I spent alot of my time there because my cousins thought I was some fancy city cousin that couldn't get dirty.
Today, I have an arbor in my yard. I planted 2 climbing roses on it. A yellow rose climber on one side and light pink "New Dawn" climber on the other side. It's still fairly young - under 2 years, so I don't get as much flowers yet. I can't wait for it to cover the whole arbor. The pink roses is a hybrid that is supposed to take over the arbor. Someday, I hope to give one of my daughters a dinner reception in the garden. May be nothing as big as the wedding in Steve Martin's "Father of the Bride" movie, but something along that line would be fine.

What about all those Nguyen last name? They're as common as Smith in the US

In old Vietnamese society, if someone contributed to the court, the emperor allowed that person to adopt the royal last name, a practice much like being knighted.
There are other historical reasons for the prevalence of the Nguyen name. During the Tran Dynasty in the 11th to 13th centuries, many of the families of the prior dynasty courtesans - the Lys - changed their name to Nguyen to avoid persecution.