My Vietnam Experience

A group that I encounter on a daily basis is my family. They’re always here for me and they have been in my life since the second I opened my eyes till now, present day. I was born in America so I’m a Vietnamese Asian American and so is my little sister. But my grandparents and parents emigrated from Vietnam so the older generations in my family had to gain their citizenship to be able to live here. Both my mom and my dad are in their 40s-50s. My little sister is 14 on the other hand. Both my parents work but mainly my dad leads the house and he’s basically the main worker who provides for us. Religion has a big influence on my family and in Vietnamese culture we practice the way of good life and the concept of life. So basically that means
my family practices Buddhism which is our religion. Buddhism is solely based off of karma and if you expect to live a good life than you should do good. At the same time it’s a complicated religion because we aren’t really praying to a God/Jesus or reading some bible, we just have to understand the concept of living, life, death, and everything beyond that. Some believe that Buddhism isn’t a religion because it’s “a way of life” but I grew up going to temple and praying to Buddha so it is my religion. Just because you can’t see God/Jesus but you can see Buddha shouldn’t change a persons thought on the Buddhist religion. Even at times where I’m unable to see Buddha I would still pray to him because he is my god. That’s the way I grew up and my family and I still attend temple on some occasions. However, religion is not a topic I would be speaking about in class because I know that many Americans would disagree on the fact that it is a religion.

If I were to alter my speech and present it to another audience I would choose to present it in front of veterans of the Vietnam War.
Everything in my introduction speech was very broad because I was just talking about myself becoming who I am today. I changed the power point slide within every 30 seconds talking about a different factor/subject in my life. If I were to change it and perform in front of veterans I would make it more detailed and give my speech a more focused purpose. I would change my attitude and make my speech rather more serious since it is relevant to my audience. I would do a lot more research on the Vietnam War before I began my speech to show that I do have knowledge about what I’m speaking about since these people were in the war. I would like to show them both sides of the story from Vietnam’s point of view on what happened and then America’s point of view on what happened (what we learn in school because they never speak about the other country). I would go more into details about how my family motivated me to become who I am today and how this war effected my families life greatly. I would end my speech saying something cliché like “I always just think about how my family has suffered so much for me to be given this opportunity in life.” And I feel that this would connect my audience more to my speech because the Vietnam War is a topic that they care about; and I also believe that they have other grandchildren in the same position as me who could relate with the same thought of
mind.