Oct 30, 1991.  

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, but at that time, it was underdeveloped. The houses are very old, dilapidated and there are plants growing close to the walls that make the hours look damp. October is the month when the fall begins in Vietnam. The leaves on the trees began to fall down the road more and more. Huyen’s house was in the alley and had a big tree in front of her house. Thuy is Huyen’s mother. The day Huyen’s was born, Thuy was in the kitchen and carry Huyen in her womb. She made lunch for her husband. While she was cleaning the fish, she felt the water was broken.  

    “Honey, honey”. She shouted “The baby wants to go out” 

   “ok, everything is ready for you baby,” Nhan said with the expectation of seeing his first child. Nhan is Huyen’s father, he is an engineer of a large company in Hanoi at that time. Huyen is the first child of them so they always give the best to Huyen. A few years later, they had one more kid together. He is Chau.  

Huyen's family was an educated and wealthy family at the time but after the war, Huyen’s mother saw the inequality in society and did not want her children to grow up in such a country. Thuy wants all her children to have a better life. From her knowledge and relationship, she knows that America is a fair and civilized country. She and her husband decided to go to the U.S but everything was not as she expected. Thuy's family was detained in Hong Kong and returned to Vietnam 1 year later. That is exactly why when Huyen finished High School in Vietnam and her parents decided to go to America college. Huyen’s parents believed that the education system in the US is the top of the world.  

2009. 

In Vietnam culture, we always stay together when we have dinner or lunchtime. That is when we talk about plans in the future and it was also the moments Huyen knew she would go to the US to study. She was extremely excited because she was young and going to a new place is a dream of a lot of teenagers. But she didn’t know how the difficulties of living alone. She is curious about studying in The U.S. 

A few days later, Huyen felt sad because she had many friends in Vietnam. when she shared with her best friend, she cried and hugged her for a long time because she would not know how long it was not to see Huyen again. That was a long day for her.  

Of course, when Huyen’s mother had intended to let Huyen go to the US to study, she had prepared many things such as money and shelter for Huyen. Alice is a friend that she helped when Alice's family traveled to Vietnam. In one of the meetings, Alice allowed her to send Huyen to live in her house if Huyen goes to college in The U.S. Language is the most difficult thing for Huyen because, in Vietnam, we don’t speak English at all. In school. We learned more about grammar than Speaking, reading, or writing. 

November 30, 2010, is the day that Huyen had to go to prepare a new school semester in America. She was very excited but also accompanied her homesickness when she was not out of Vietnam yet. Her family said goodbye to her with a hug. When she arrived, she couldn’t read any signs at the U.S Customs and boarder so I just followed other passengers. It took her a 1 hour to get through the gate. her host, Alice, and Alice’s newborn baby, Mackey, picked her up at the airport with a tight hug. I was so surprised because hug someone is not your family in Vietnam isn’t a culture. On the way to get home, she saw many lights on the road and began to feel empty and homesick. Everything to her right now become strange to her. The houses and the roads are very different from the place where she lived, although she is a girl who watches American films a lot, but feels the reality still made her feel strange. Alice’s house is bigger than her house. When she walked into the house, she saw everything wonderful. Although she was born into a wealthy family in Vietnam, what she saw was still wonderful and interesting. All the corners of Alice's house are very beautiful.  

The Alice family is an American family and they are vegetarian. That means Huyen can’t talk Vietnamese with them. That was stressful for her for the first month. Of course, Alice has helped her a lot to integrate with life here, but she still felt sad. Don’t have any a friend, can’t talk her own language and can’t eat meat were things made her feel worse. When the school season began, she had to take a bus to go to school because it was very far from Alice's house to the school. Every day like that makes Huyen remember her family and her friends. That was her first semester at Laney college. It was totally different here compared to Vietnam. The first year was tough for her. All her classes, she was taking at that time was hard for her, because I couldn’t understand what the professor said, and she never asked the professor to explain anything to me. Although she has prepared to learn English in Vietnam, it was obviously not enough. She also didn’t ask her classmate because if her classmate explained to her, her listening level still didn’t understand. The one thing was helping her that she didn’t have any friends so she can use all free time to learn English. Alice had helped her a lot with that issue. 

Spring 2012, This is a year that she can never forget. It was meeting the person who helped her This is a year that she can never forget. It was meeting the person who helped her regain her joy and optimism. They met in class and became a couple after a few meals because She has been craving some Vietnamese food for a long time now. Love coming to her is very simple and light because she lacked the care of friends and family when she is not around them. One year later, Huyen wanted to move out of Alice’s house and lived with Thuan, but her mother didn’t want her to live with a man who wasn’t your husband. That is the Vietnamese tradition. If you live like that, people in Vietnam will despise you but Huyen has lived and studied in the US for a few years because this has changed her mind.  

“If you want to live like that, I won't give you money to study,” Thuy said. Huyen was crying a lot because she loves Thuan so much and she knew that the cost of studying isn’t cheap. She told Thuan about that and they still decided to live together. In that semester, Huyen started to work part-time jobs when she was free and Thuan worked more than before to help her with her school fees so that she could stay with him in the US. Thuan has been a US citizen so the government has greatly financed his education. That was the most difficult time for them, but they got over it and married a year later.  It took four years to become an immigrant because Huyen must prove lasting love along with Thuan. It's a true story from an international student in the US who became an immigrant.