The feeling of warmth and nostalgia in being back in my old community

I'm currently in Minnesota for two weeks. This is the first time I've actually ever paid for my own plane ticket, though not my first time flying alone. I've been flying alone across the country since I was the age of 4. So it's nothing new for me. But with gas prices soaring, who knows when I'll take another trip back up here? So I must make the most of it while I'm here.

This trip, it's different. I'm finally an "adult" now and everyone is treating me differently. Perhaps because I am older and perhaps because really I am different, but I'm not sure if many people noticed. Many people say that I still look the same as I did the last time I was in town...making me feel as if I did little growing, but that's when my aunts try to make me feel better by saying that Hmong women just age well. Although, I think it's really just asian women in general that seem to age well, they meant.

Anyway, as much as I love living in California and embracing the diversity of my homeland terrain, I also love coming back to my Hmong community as well. I've never really been one to fully embrace my culture, but lately walking into life with a different mind set and more willingness to accept, I've been quite interested in getting to know and understand more about my culture.

Just today, my cousin Lucie bought me a copy of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang. I've yet to read it, but from her reviews and a response email I heard today by Kao herself, I'm quite interested in what I'll learn from reading it.

Just hearing Hmong dialect again in such fluency and familiarness, it really brings about this very warm and nostalgic feeling in me. It seems I just can't seem to turn away from what I grew up with. Being Hmong will always be apart of me, and I think I'm really starting to become eager to embrace it.