Vietnamese Food - “Traditional Vietnamese cooking is greatly admired for its fresh ingredients, minimal use of dairy and oil, complementary textures, and reliance on herbs and vegetables.”Pho Ga (Chicken)“Vietnam tells you what to expect of the Vietnamese and their country and what they expect of you in return.” Anthony Bourdain - "Vietnam. It grabs you and doesn’t let you go. Once you love it, you love it forever." Anthony Bourdain is and advocate for communicating the value and tastiness of traditional or peasant foods. Anthony is an American Chef, author, and television personality. Bourdain noticed at an early age in France when he tried his first oyster on an oyster fisherman’s boat, that he really had a passion for food, he loved it. He graduated from Dwight-Englewood school in 1973, after graduation he attended Vassar College for two years and then graduated from the world-renowned Culinary Institute of America in 1978, and at the same time was working in Provincetown, Massachusetts seafood restaurant, which sparked his decision to pursue cooking as a career. Bourdain started running the kitchens of New York restaurants such as the Supper Club and Sullivan’s; He later became executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in 1998. Anthony Bourdain a well-known Journalist and Chef, takes his journey to Vietnam on his television show Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Inspiring and showing his audience on the other side of the television screen as well as Obama, all the great things about Vietnam, especially places to visit, and the best things to eat. Bourdain’s television show really creates the best experience you can have in Vietnam, from the aromas, locals, and the food. It creates an experience that not many will get to experience, but they can get a taste of it. When Bourdain first arrived in Vietnam, the smell of the place made him know he was going to like this place. Stating that certain countries just smell good and he knows they are going to be good. Certain spices that he can smell in different countries aren’t like back home, there is also some smells that aren’t as appealing, but that is part of the mix. Bourdain calls Vietnam a clash of cultures mixed with a hectic pace and people who are serious about eating. Anthony claims that Vietnam grabs you and doesn’t let you go, once you love it, you love it forever. Hanoi is the fragrance of motorbike exhaust, fish sauce, incense, and the far away smells of grilling over charcoal. Anthony had a chance to take Obama around Vietnam in a short amount of time, showing him the great flavors Vietnam packs in their food. Also, admiring the fact that everyone, including them, put up with the abuse for a glorious meal which contained a bowl of rice noodles with spicy chiles, a rich hearty, porky broth with pig knuckle and snout. It was the only item on the menu and it was good. Another interesting fact that he witnessed firsthand was that grilling on the streets only happens at night because the flames from the grill are considered illegal, when the police come around, they adjust very quickly making it hardly noticeable that they were using an open flame grill. Vietnamese Immigrants -“Moving from one country to another can be a stressful experience; leaving friends and familiar places behind causes loneliness. When the newcomers are immigrants and refugees they must cope with the added difficulties of communicating in a new language and determining which new customs to adopt.” My mom was born in Saigon, Vietnam. While she was over there she attended 1st to 3rd grade. By the age of 8 her parents told her to leave with her brother to America. The reason they left was for freedom, back then in Vietnam, the military people could come to your house and do anything they wanted to you. There was no freedom. Also by the age of 20 was when they forced all men to join the army, they gave you no training and forced you into battle with no experience. Her brother didn’t want to go to war and die so that was another reason for escaping. Her parents did not go with her at the time but her dad did later on by himself. One day her brother Hoang Ngo took her and they started their journey to America. In 1980 when she was 8 years old, the first place they headed was to Cambodia. She remembers walking long distances as well as taking vehicles to get there. Once they reached to Cambodia she remembers walking through the forest at night to get on to a boat. That was when she realized she was escaping to get to America. They walked with a group of people that came from the same city, about a couple hundred. She felt scared and frightened because along the way there were police chasing them. If they got caught they would’ve been put into jail. Once they arrive on the boat, they start heading towards their next stop, Malaysia. Along the way, the engine broke down in the middle of nowhere. So, the boat was just floating and floating for days. She said she was out on the ocean for about a month. People started to die because of no food or water on the boat. When people died, they would throw them off the boat. She told me that the Thailand people came on boats and robbed them of everything they had 6 or 7 times even when they didn’t have anything. A tragic incident she witnessed was while on the boat one of her older friends got raped and killed. My mom wasn’t taken at the time because she was too young, only 8 at the time. Finally, the boat floated closer to land, and when they saw land from a far, everyone still surviving including my mom and brother jumped off the boat and rushed to shore. Once they got to shores of Malaysia there were a lot of refugee camps accepting them in. My mom stayed there for 3 years before she was sent to the Philippines. While she was in Malaysia, they started to teach English to everyone because they knew they would need it. Most of her 3 years there was relaxing. She didn't do much but go to school to learn English and she loved to go swimming in the ocean and play with her friends. She also received notice that her dad was already in Thailand and was on his way to America. He ended up making it there before her luckily. Every day her and her brother would go to the spot where more people would come in to Malaysia to get to America, hoping that they would see their family. When my mom arrived to the Philippines she only stayed there for about 6 months before she took a flight to America. She arrived in Utah from the Philippines because her dad sponsored her over and her step family was waiting for her there. It was really uncomfortable for her the whole time there because she was treated bad by her step mom and she had never met them before, not even back in Vietnam. It was like living with strangers. Her time here in Utah, she was 11 when she arrived. She attended Monroe elementary following than West Lake middle school, as well as Granger High school. After high school, she got married to Huy Nguyen and had a daughter and a son. Now she currently works at a company called Northrop Grumman she has been there for 13 years and she's happy with it. “Although thousands of refugees have arrived in the United States, they each have their own story to tell.”
References1- Timberlake, Elizabeth M., and Kim Oanh Cook. 1984. "Social Work and the Vietnamese Refugee." Social Work 29, no. 2: 108-113. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 4, 2017).
2- Strom, Robert, and Darlene Johnson. 1992. "Developing curriculum for parent and grandparent immigrants and refugees from Vietnam and.." Journal Of Instructional Psychology 19, no. 1: 53. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 4, 2017). 3-KOH, PRISCILLA. 2016. "The Stories They Carried: Reflections of Vietnamese-Canadians 40 Years after That War." Refuge (0229-5113) 32, no. 2: 9-19. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 4, 2017). 4- Chan, Sucheng. The Vietnamese American 1.5 generation: stories of war, revolution, flight, and new beginnings. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006. 5- Ellis, Claire. Culture shock!: Vietnam. London: Kuperard, 2001. 6- "Vietnamese cuisine." Wikipedia. April 05, 2017. Accessed April 05, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_cuisine.
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Learning other cultures lifestyle is beneficial because it reflects who they are, and it can reduce discrimination. It shows us who they are so we don’t get stereotypical, because that’s normal to them. It opens a wider perspective at the world, understanding that we all come from different backgrounds, which helps us to understand and communicate with each other.Vietnam being a very hot place, causes them to not have refrigerators. With that impact, they mainly use fresh ingredients when they cook. Their cooking style reflect how they are, typically skinny because the food is normally on the healthier side. Society think all Asian food is fat and covered in oil, but Vietnamese is one of the healthiest cuisines due to its fresh ingredients and use of vegetables and less oil than other countries. Vietnamese always has the combination between fragrant, taste, and color that most others food don’t contain. Society needs to explore the flavors of Vietnam. Vietnamese food is appealing to mostly everybody. One of the most famous would be Pho, many know of it and say that it tastes good.
“Home is the space where they currently reside, the place where their immediate family lives, the country of parental origins, and/or where other family members live.”Finding a place that you can call home is difficult, but once you do it’s one of the best feelings. Vietnamese refugees come to America searching for their family and anyone they can possibly know to feel more at home, surrounding themselves around a Vietnamese community makes it feel more like it did at home. Others say that this isn’t their home. They come here to live in peace and get treated with disrespect, what is home anyways? A place where they can find their family, a place where they are currently at, a place where they feel safe. Even after traveling back to Vietnam, refugees still claim that American is their home because of all the horrors that still go on there. A lot say that they could’ve done a lot better than what it is now. Vietnamese refugees need to feel welcomed. Having traveled from across the world to come and get disrespected for trying to live a life is cruel. Having others claim that this isn’t your home is hostile. Just because you weren’t born here doesn’t mean that it’s not your home. Each person comes with a different story, we need to understand where they are coming from before kicking them out.
“After about ten years in the United States, the refugees generally achieve stability in socioeconomic status and adaptation.”Entering Vietnam or getting to know the lifestyle of a Vietnamese can tell you a lot about them. Why they do such things in particular, their customs and etiquette show who they are as a person and what they see out of this life. Their home country or even their home and surroundings can tell you a lot about who they are. People aren’t taking the time to learn about who they are, entering their country or home without noticing what is there and why it is there. Not understanding their behavior causes us to be racist because we don’t understand their background. They need people to understand who they are first before coming at them and being racist or saying stereotypical things that have always been normal to them their whole life. They don’t judge others, they just accept them for who they are because you don’t know what they have gone through.
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