Senior Ngan Le moved from Vietnam to the USA in 2014. She said, “I moved to Mississippi first for 2 years, then I moved to CT in 1st grade.” In Mississippi, there was a larger Vietnamese population that helped her out. Ngan said, “in Mississippi, I didn’t learn much because they translated for me because there were a lot of Vietnamese people who told me what to do.”

Here in Connecticut, she said, “in ELL class, they taught me how to sound things out and learn words.” Ngan was put into a place where she did not understand anything around her. She said that learning English was “pretty hard because I was just sitting there with people talking and not understanding.” Since she was new to the country and speaking a foreign language, other students would ask her a lot of questions or how to stay stuff in Vietnamese.

Ngan said, “I still struggle with spelling and reading. Sometimes I sound it out, but it is not working well.” She also talked about how she uses past tense instead of present. Learning a new language is difficult, but Ngan does appreciate the fact that she is bilingual. She said being bilingual helps because “If I go to Vietnam, I can speak Vietnamese.” She also likes being able to switch languages to talk to different people.

Even though Ngan has lived in the US for nine years, she still carries on her Vietnamese culture. She said, “every day, my family speaks Vietnamese, and they always cook Vietnamese dinner.” She also said, “We celebrate Lunar Year.” Lunar New Year is a Vietnamese tradition in February. It is a New Years celebration. She shared they open red envelopes. She said it is kind of like Christmas, where they get gifts in the envelopes, and the family gathers and eats.

Ngan’s family also owns Glenwood Market, which is a store located in the plaza on Glenwood Road, right across from Joel. Ngan said, “it is familiar to people in the neighborhood who go there. We have a little of everything. It is a lot of old people who go there. Breakfast is so good. My Aunt always makes the home cook package meals.”

On Monday, November 20th, Ngan came to the ECE English classes to teach them about communicating in a different language and a little about Vietnam. She presented a slideshow and only spoke in Vietnamese while elaborating on certain foods and asking what region they are from. As students who primarily speak English, we struggled to understand what she was saying, but with context clues we started to put pieces together. This helped us see the language barrier of someone who moves to a new country and does not understand the language, such as when Ngan moved to the US.

Ngan said she loves living in the US now. She exclaimed, “I like living in the US because I have more opportunity and supplies here, and the schools are much better.” Ngan is now looking at her future path. She said she wants to do nursing as her major and possibly attend UConn. Ngan shared, “I want to do nursing for the classic reason of helping out others.”

Ngan continues to work hard to learn more English while also furthering her Vietnamese culture.