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A Refugee's Story

In Mom's daily e-mail on March 10, she wrote:

I created a PowerPoint with about 10 pictures to share with my co-workers tomorrow during the Genealogy Happy Hour about my refugee's story.  It doesn't go into details of any part of my life, just major points like growing up during the Vietnam War, fleeing to USA, becoming refugee and then US citizen, getting married.

My sister liked it so much she requested that I document the pictures and captions.

This is a story of a girl who was born in Saigon, Vietnam.

And grew up during the Vietnam war.

She went to an all-girl high school where the uniform was the white Vietnamese dress.

When the war ended, her family fled to the United States and became refugees.

She was an immigrant who wore hand-me-down clothes from strangers

and sometimes talked on the phone like any typical teenager.

Her family became naturalized citizens.

This is the boy who grew up in the Pacific Northwest whom she met and fell in love with.

Although her parents preferred that she marry a Vietnamese boy,

they understood this was America, and they didn't object.

His parents, however, wanted him to marry a nice German girl since their ancestry is German

and they thought the refugee girl was beneath him.

He's from a prim and proper family whose children are all tall, blond, and blue eyed.

They got married anyway.

This is the DNA profile of one of their children.

He's not pure German after all.