============================================================== To reach ALL SJD members, please send to sjd@satjadham.net ... Do NOT include any other addresses when sending to the list... Include as LITTLE of the original messages as possible........ Message sent by: Amphephone Phettaphong *** Announcement: *** Please send your member fee to Victor if you haven't done so. ============================================================== Sabaidee thook qon, Hope every body have a wonderful Monday morning neither at work or at home. Hey Sai, Good job on that website of your. Good to have you back bro. Anyway, along I have story to share with everyone. I would like to dedicate this story to my neice and the rest of Laotian kids who was born in this country. My not so called home On the last day of my trip back to Laos, I felt sentimental, standing at the main rotary street in Vientaine, Laos, watching the motorcycles, taxi, bicycles and pedestrians. The four week trip has had it disappointments - obsess about a place so called my parent’s home land. It was beautiful, wondrous and life changing. I amused myself watching a women transport a gig screen TV on the back of her scooter, a tricycle driver pedaling a heavy women in the passenger seat and two young boys running through the confusion, one piggy-back on the other. I felt joy seeing Laotian people doing Laotian things. Throughout my trip, they had been the one watching me. In the role of the "other", the rich, lucky American, I told relatives and strangers about my life in the US. At times, I felt foolish because I don’t speak Lao well. I also have First World habits that felt out of place at dinner tables and throughout the countryside. I couldn’t even imagine navigating that rotary. Suddenly, in the swirl of traffic, an orphan kid tugged at a hem of my pants, holding up his palm for money. The inside of his horrible hand was bloody and scarred. He didn’t wait for me to respond, simply pushing on into the traffic, making it across without harm and disappearing. In that instant, I burst into tears. I thought, once I leave this corner, I will never be Laotian again. It was strange revelation, brought on by the sensation of feeling totally disregarded by the crowds that passed me by. As refreshingly easy as it was to be Laotian in Laos, I felt like a punch-line to a joke: What a do you call a Laotian girl who was born in the US, who can’t read, write or speak her birth language fluently? Not Laotian… The only thing I have in me was only my color of skin and Laotian nationality-ness, I was also saddened by the realization that it would never growth further, no matter how many trip back to Laos I made. The next morning, I realized that an in internal dilemma has fallen away. "Laotian American" is a new construct, but it is undeniably who I am. The rest of my life stretched out a head. My parent and I board the plane for home. Good day, Amp _____________________________________________________________ Get FREE web-based email at http://webmail.lao.net and get your very own @Qon.Lao.net email address. _ ***************************************************************** Visit SatJaDham Homepage at: http://www.satjadham.org (or .net) *****************************************************************