How Going Back To Vietnam Changed My Life

Going back to Vietnam didn’t just give me a great experience that will stay with me forever, it changed the way I looked at life. Since it was the first time going back since I was adopted, it was like going for the first time. The monumental events that I experienced during this trip couldn’t have been predicted. I visited different parts of Vietnam, which allowed me to see how different people lived. For example the people who lived in the village I was found in lived life so much differently than the people in Hanoi and the orphanage. This memory changed my life because it let me experience the life I could have had.
September 2011 was the month I went back to Vietnam. It was the first day there, me and my mom were staying in Hanoi Happy Hotel; I was so excited because we had finally made it to Vietnam and I craved exploring the city. We walked up and down the motor bike filled streets and explored the shops lining the sidewalks. Being their was so different than America because the people acted different so the atmosphere felt different in a way. It was interesting to see how a fancy city in Vietnam was extremely different than one in America. The first day was when I started really focusing on how different people lived there.
On the second day we went to my orphanage.
The building’s were mustard yellow with paint chipping off the sides and fairly large. Most of the door were open because they were falling down. It amazed me to think that I lived here once, in this run down place, and someone saved me and brought me to America where I have everything. The person showing us the orphanage told us that many of the adults working here once were kids living here. The kids housed there were like me, left by their parents, but they didn’t have a home they had been living in the orphanage all their life. It made me really sad to think about all of these kids without a family. Many of the people working there also once were at this orphanage and grew
up.
After we visited the orphanage we went to the village where they found me. The village was so different than my neighborhood. I whispered to my mom “It’s so small.” The village was a fourth of the size of my street with vegetation crowding everything. Everything was tiny, the houses, the roads, and the village itself. It made me feel so privileged because I had so much and they had so little, but the people there didn’t care. I realized that their life never consisted of the things I have. They don’t feel like they are missing anything, and they probably never will. A little after we arrived, I realized 3 boys were following us on their bikes up the dirt path. It was very interesting to see this because it made me question if I would be friends with them if I had never been abandoned at the hospital.
I sometimes wish I lived in Vietnam and still believe that I will go back someday. This experience helped me see the world in a bigger way. I found that you can’t really understand how people live until you see it in person. I don’t think I could live without my computer and my phone because I do everything on them. School, talking to friends, and video all happen on a device, but over there their life consists of School, work, and playing with friends. It was amazing to see the difference in lives and how people in different places have extremely different lives.