No one is certain why. More than 50,000 Vietnamese war refugees poured onto the Pacific Island of Guam at the end of April 1975. Kim Do recalls a woman who came out of a latrine screaming one day. The woman had carried all her money and jewels against her skin, and she told bewildered onlookers she had just flushed it all down the toilet. Maybe it was the trauma of what they suffered over there, or maybe assimilation is paradoxically more difficult now that there are so many Vietnamese here that it is possible to get by in many cities without speaking English.
More students come from Asia than Latin America.
More than just a conduit to the Vietnamese community, Gigi is a walking testament to the global city Houston has become. A typical week might include advising a Kenyan student about visas, exchanging e-mails with a prospective student in Saudi Arabia, attending a conference for international businesses seeking employee training, helping a friend organize a Vietnamese ancient art exhibit, and meeting for lunch with a local businessman who wants to send dairy cows to Hanoi. Vietnam obviously holds a special interest, though. She works on exchange programs such as training Vietnamese doctors here to learn about hospice care. For months, she has worked on a program to send an HCC professor to teach in Vietnam.