25 years ago, my parents came to America looking for a new life. They both were teachers in Vietnam with highly educated backgrounds. However, when we got to America, everything changed. It is not about who you were, but it is about how we can learn to adapt to the new environment with a new culture. My parent had to struggle to make a living; I remember both of my parents had to work at a restaurant; cleaning tables and washing dishes. At that time, there was no dish washer, so everything had to be done by hand. They came home exhausted every night, and after a few years working in at the restaurant, my mom decided to make a switch and went to learn how to do nails. She heard from her friend that it is easy to obtain the license, and she can make more money than working at the restaurant.
She got her license a few months afterward and started looking for a job at the nearby salons. It wasn’t easy at all because she didn’t know English very well, and she didn’t have much experience. Therefore, she had to go to salons that are a few hours away from home. As the result, she moved to the boss house and only came home during weekends. I knew she made more money because every time she came home, she would take the whole family out and buy us nice dinner. However, I wasn’t sure whether she was happy with the job or not.
One night, I was watching many beautiful actresses wearing beautiful nails with different colors on the television, and I told myself that I want to have my nails look exactly like that. Therefore, I asked my mom, “can you do my nail for me?” She said, “no you are too young to get your nails done.” She also said, “work hard so in the future when you have a lot of money then you can go to a salon and get your nails done.”
After working for 5 years in more than 8 different nail salons, my mom was able to save a good amount of money and decided to open a nail salon. She talked it over with my dad for a few months because