My family regularly goes to Vietnam, but never for this this long, and never with my entire family. This trip is going to be the biggest I'm going to take and possibly the last for a long time. The last time I travelled to Vietnam I was a senior in high school, and now I am a senior in college. Without long summer vacations between school years, who knows when I'll be able to make a trip of this magnitude again?
My entire maternal side of the family is here this year to celebrate the life of my grandmother, who passed away three years ago. In Vietnam, the period of mourning lasts three years, and this trip is our way of commemorating the end of mourning. One of our first stops was to the Basilica of Our Lady of La Vang, to request a mass for my grandmother.
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