Today, Linh and I went to the Barnes & Noble on University together. We started at Starbucks so I could sip a Peppermint Mocha while we browsed. We talked a little bit about Christmas presents. She plans on making most of her presents or cards for people. She's also not giving as many people presents. The only person Linh was really concerned with getting a present for was her sister. I've spent a few weeks stressing over papers, tests, and what presents to give my friends and family. Sometimes, I forget how simple presents can be. I enjoyed Linh's enthusiasm about making simple cards. We didn't see anything at Barnes & Noble that would help her, but I did give her some suggestions for other places to visit.
Once we moved out of the gift sections, we started looking at books together. Linh was excited to try to find a set of Christmas stories that she used to read, but we couldn't find it. Instead, she found a display of several collections of stories such as Aesop's Fables, Jane Austen's works, and other large volumes. Linh started picking each one up and asking me if I had read them. I'd tell her which ones I had read and she'd ask me to describe them. She wanted to find a collection of Grimm's fairy tales, because she had read several of them as a child. Many of us have also read Grimm's fairy tales, but in different forms from the ones Linh read in Vietnam. She has a childlike excitement about everything. It's refreshing. Most of the people I know are fairly jaded and sarcastic. Most of them aren't so happy about everything, but Linh is.
Linh also told me about how she wound up as a student in the United States. She came to New York as an exchange student at first. It wasn't easy for her. Her first host family was excited to have her- as a maid and babysitter. They had two younger children and wanted Linh to spend a lot of time taking care of them. Living there wasn't working out for her, so Linh found another host family. She said they were a sweet couple, and always nice to her. Unfortunately, they had a tough time financially. When winter arrived, the family struggled to even pay for heating in their home. They decided that they couldn't afford to keep Linh. She had to move to yet another home. After her third home in New York, Linh moved to San Antonio to go to a private military school with her sister. After graduating, Linh came to TCU because her sister is also here. Her parents want her to study business and then come back to Vietnam. Linh's dream is to study business and entertainment- to appease her parents and herself.
I hope that Linh and I will still be able to hang out during the next semester. She's a nice girl and it's interesting to compare our cultures.
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