Reminiscing

This is so sad. Why? Because I stayed inside my house all weekend, studying for my Microbiology midterm on Monday. When I said I stayed inside the house all weekend I meant literally for two whole days, without one step outside the front door. This is not the first time that I’d spend my weekend at home without going anywhere. There is nothing exciting going on in my area and when does it is not exactly the kind of excitement that I want any part of. The area where I am living at is not really a safe place to live. A year ago, one of my friends, who also lived in the same area as I am, informed me that there are some gangs members living in my neighborhood and that I should be careful. I am easily scared so when my friend told me that I was pretty freaked out. Since then, I tried to stay inside my house most of the time. This decision did not affect my daily routine very much because ever since I immigrated to California from Vietnam ten years ago, my family and I don’t really go out that a lot. The explanation for my family seclusion is because we don’t really know any good places for our family to go and have fun. Therefore, we just stay home and be with each other.
I like being with my family like this because I remembered when we were living in Vietnam; I rarely have any quality time with my parents. I’m not saying that my parents were negligent of taking of me because I did have a happy childhood. It was that I felt my parents did not spend a lot time playing me when I was little. My parents were always running their business at the restaurant that we used to own before we came to the United States or spending their time with their friends, traveling around South Vietnam. I, sometimes, went along with my parents and their friends on few of their adventures but I did not really enjoy it though because I was just a little kid with bunch of adults talking and joking about things that I had absolutely no idea of. Therefore, whenever my parents went out with their friends, I hung out with my three best friends in my neighborhood and had the time with my life. Now that I’m reminiscing about my childhood, I can’t help but smile about inseparable my friends and I were. We spent almost every single day together playing in the street, at each other homes, and we also did our own adventures around the Ho Chi Minh City ourselves. I guess in a way when my family immigrated to America my parents and I somewhat, unknowingly, traded our time with our friends to have more of family quality time together.