The spring is oncoming, and that just remind me all about my old home Vietnam. During the middle of January, we will celebrate Vietnamese traditional holidays. You might not know the name of it so Vietnamese we called: “TET holidays,” which means new year for us.

It’s been more than 2 years. I don’t remember exactly what “TET’ looks like for us. We stayed in Thailand without our relatives and also without the old relationship we used to have. I missed them so much, missed the time we have friends and other Vietnamese around, and we isolated ourselves because it will be safer for my dad, the one ran away from his country because his opinions. So we stayed safe in Thailand which is mean we have to forget a lot of our hobbies, activity and our cultural. Back to time when I was a 17 years old boy, I lived in a house with my parents and a little brother, we are not rich but we had a house and it’s a really nice house. The house has 2 floors and I’m the one who lived upstairs in my room. My room has a square window where is my favorite vision I mostly spent time with. When TET come over my family started cleaning the house for new year, we believe that if the first day of new year our house is tidy and light we will have so much luck and every members at this house will be more health, loveable.

Almost forgot that, I lived in a small town it’s called DONG THAP, the fact is I wasn’t born in that place but my family has lived in there for the whole 17 years so that like my hometown. In my town nothing too much famous, but we have a nice river run all over the village and beside that we had a lot of fruit farms, so you can imagine my childhood really beautiful. DONG THAP is a sleepy town, everyone will stayed at home when the sky getting dark, and a young boy like me with his friends these had so much energy like us will have another way to deal with night time. So we get the bicycle and together we go to the river and we started chatting about our dreams, about our secret, and all about our really first love. When I wrote until here, my heart beat too fast memories just came back all over immediately, I felt sad honestly, I missed my old life. Miss them a lot.

I’m not good at English writing, so I can’t describe my emotions right now by words, that’s all I can do for now. I always keep smiling because I believe that my life will be better in the future, and I still have my family along, so with us home mean “Family stay together wherever we are.”

Anh Vo Doan is young dreamer from VIETNAM. He is part of the millennial generation who has a big dream to do whatever they like to do. He will never give up his life for somebody else as his dad always tells him that you should live your own way until the end and look back on the many things you went through and then realize the meaning of your life. Anh Vo loves helping people. The more people he helps, the more happiness he has. His life might get tough sometimes, making him lay down, but he promised himself to never give up again. 

Anh Vo’s essay was selected as a Judge’s Choice to be featured in Kindred and won second-place in the 18-21 age group of the 2020 Bangkok Refugee Young Writer’s Contest. This year’s theme centered around the word HOME.