This picture was taken on the 2nd day back to my tiny village named Tan Chau
where I was born and raised until my family moved to Saigon when I was five
years old. It's located west of Saigon, near Cambodian border. To go there,
you have to travel south through Tan An, My Tho, Can Tho, then northwest
through Vinh Long, Sa Dec, Long Xuyen, and Chau Doc. Any of these small
towns sounds familiar to you?
After moving to Saigon, my mother would take my younger brother and me back
to visit relatives in the summer. We had to travel at night to avoid the
long waiting at the ferry landings and the heat, but we often had to get off
the bus, waited for the soldiers to take the landmines off the road, or
waited for the fighting to stop before we could travel again. We usually
stayed at the old house or at my grandmother's house, and I can never forget
the good times I had with my cousins and the neighbor kids.
In front of Kevin (6 years old, my son) is the Mekong river; it's only a few
hundred yards from my old house. This used to be my favorite place to watch
the boats go by in the early morning or late afternoon when I was little. A
place where I often spent hours straining my eyes in hope that I could catch
a glimpse of the French, or the VC who lived on the other side of the river;
I thought they were just big, mean old monsters!
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This is one of the classrooms in the village school. Kevin (6 yrs old) looks
pretty big among other 8-9 years old children. Each classroom has one light
bulb, one teacher, and 40+ students. I love and miss them all! They are
polite, obedient, and well-behaved kids. It would be very nice that someday
we could go back together to visit them all and see how much they have
changed through the years.
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