My Mom

                  My mother is a very strong and successful woman. She is the most important person in my life. She isn't just another woman. She is extraordinary. She is the most influential person who inspires me. My mom is not only a very good mom but also a very good daughter in law too. I would be lost without my mom. She tried a very hard work to take care of my family and my grandfather.

                  Life was so hard after the war in my country. The economic was depressed. Everybody lost their jobs. A couple months after the depression, my dad lost his jobs too. My mom tried to looking for many jobs. She didn't care about how hard of the job was as long as she could earn money to support my family. Finally, she got a job; it was a seller in a bakery. She worked 56 hour for a week. My mom started her job around 1 o'clock in the afternoon and she finish at 9 o'clock in the evening. At midnight, she went to sell the bread in the parking place or on the sidewalk to earn more money. The more money she earned, the more food she bought to feed everybody in my family and to pay some bills. She had to work hard to take care of us and save money for us to go to school. School fees in my country are very expensive. My sister and I always used the old books from my cousin but we were happy because we could go to school. Every school year, she was more depressed but she still tried many ways to earn money to keep us in school.

                   While she was working two jobs, she also took care of my dad's father like a daughter. He had a heart attack, he wasn't able to do everything by himself after he got sick. He couldn't walk or sit either and he just lay in bed all the time. My grandfather had 9 children and 25 grandchildren but no one wanted to take care of him or help my mom. They didn't like to take care of sick people who gave birth to them. I have two older sisters and one younger sister. In that time, all of us were little and she had to cook and do everything in the house. All day long, she took care of my grandfather and all of us. My mom tried so hard to do everything by herself. Nobody helped her, even my aunts or my uncles who had a lot of time but didn't want to come to my house to take care of my grandfather. My younger sister and I helped her sometimes to give my grandfather a shower or feed him when we didn't have school.
               

                 
                   Time was by so fast. We were grown up by her fatigue. My sisters and I appreciated about what did she does for us. My mom isn't a famous person or a rich person either but in my eyes she is very successful. She is all my life. She was the greatest mom I could ever had in my life and a good daughter in law. When I looked at everything she did for us, it taught me how to love family. I want to become a mother like her. I want to take care of my children and give them all my love.

Green Summer Campaign

                                    
                    My life was changed after the "Green Summer Campaign". "Green summer campaign" is  a community service program which gives college students the opportunity to do community service in rural areas such as villages, mountains and the country side. Every summer the program focuses on a different rural area. Living conditions in these areas are very poor. There are also many different ethnic minorities who are backward and lagging behind.
                 

                    I thought it was a very good program. I wanted to come there and help them, also I could learn some new things. My friends and I volunteered to go to the country side. Twenty people lived together in a small house. It was hard but I had a lot of experiences.
                      We had  many group activities to do. In the morning, my friends and I went to the rice field to help them harvest. At night time, I taught the farm children who came bare foot to school. They didn't have much time to go to school because most of the time they had to help their parents.

               

 

                      One day, my team went to village to help them to build a house which was  made of wood and coconut leaves. It was a popular house in the countryside. It would cost a lot of money if you hired someone to help you in my country. We helped them to carry wood, clean and prepare coconut leaves for them put on the proof of the house. It was hard for  me because I hadn't done a hard job like that before. While we were cleaning all the dirt collapsed from the old house, some of my friends stepped on nails or fell on the ground. It was dangerous but we weren't afraid of that.

The next day, our team had a new mission. It was more harder than everything we had done before. We went to clean the drains. All of us had to soak in a dirty water for 2 hours to lean the trash and cut all the grass. After that, we moved onto another job, we tried to clean a small river with full of water hyacinth.

                      It wasn't easy for us who were used to living in the city and just went to school.We didn't know each other before we volunteered to the campaign. But after two weeks ,we were getting closer. We were changed after we came to the farm, after we saw how hard the people there had to work to support their family.

                      Thanks to "Green summer" campaign I learned to be stronger. It was a very good experience.  I learned many lessons from there, I was changed after I went back. I stepped back and reflected on my life; I stopped chasing for materials which didn't make me as happy as I thought. I appreciated what things I didn't have and those I have.  I was glad because after two weeks, most of the farm children whom I taught knew how to read their name and some basic words. I felt proud of myself because I had dedicated my efforts to help the kids who were very innocent and virtuous. I was proud I became a solider of the "Green summer " campaign.