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!

Kevin Kibler (6 years old) and his cousins are observing the merchants on  the Mekong river struggling to steer their boats in order to cross the  river, except the currents are too swift so they are stuck going around in  circles for a long time.

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.

Kevin Kibler (6 years old) with village children. I took Kevin to the rice fields to fly his kite each evening after dinner.  All the kids in the village usually were there before us waiting to help  Kevin to get his kite up in the air.