Wednesday, February 14
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Week One California
The one amazing thing about where I'm staying is the Vietnamese food. Since the places are cleaner, my uncles say the food rivals, even surpasses Vietnam. When I left, my father asked me to do one thing, enjoy the food for him.
The reason is because the Vietnamese community here is large.
Whole blocks have nothing but Vietnamese buildings and waves of Vietnamese people. Most of my extended family is also in this area and whenever I'm here I wonder how different a person I would be if we came and lived here instead of Canada. You understand how some decisions in life are not life altering, but I know the fact that I got sick and we had to leave for Canada instead of our intended USA destination was. But let me add that I'm happy we lived in Canada and I'm glad we never lived here -- although I'm almost sure the California me would have said the same thing.
I think if I lived here I would be a lot more talkative. My dad's side is the reserved, talk behind your back people and my mother's side is the loud, say it to your face people. As a result, I'd like to think that I'm the best of both: in your face reserved.
The other day my mom led me into a trap. I was watching Veronica Mars Season 1 on my laptop when she poked her head in the room and told me that my aunt wanted to see me (hadn't seen her for years). What I didn't know was my mom and her sisters (she's got like 8 million of them) had been planning my future for me for the past half hour. When I arrived into the kitchen with the unsuspecting obedient nephew smile they laid on me a lecture like I had never experienced before. As I said, my mom's side is talkative and in your face. I knew this yet I wasn't prepared for what happened. Imagine your typical machine gun lecture, but layered on top of one another. Like I had three totally separate lectures hitting me with no regard to connect with one another. It was like they all knew what they were going to say to me and when I arrived, a silent alarm bell went off and someone pressed play on all of them and cranked the volume to full.
I just kept shifting my eyes to and fro smiling and was wondering, don't they notice that they're all talking at the same time over top of each other? Like one was telling me a story about her past experience, another was telling about the virtues of teaching young children and another was telling me how taking breaks are bad. I guess the good thing was, the lecture went three times as fast.
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