1 Clothing

My name is Linh. I'm an eighteen-year-old girl. My ethnic background and native language are Vietnamese. This is a story about what happened to me on my first day of school in America. I was nine years old.

A few weeks before school started, my aunt, my uncle, and some of my dad's friends came to visit us and they brought a lot of presents. I was surprised when I found clothing in one of the boxes. The clothes were nice but ordinary. They weren't special or fancy except for one dress. It was a dress of lace. There was lace surrounding the neck and the sleeves and lace on the bottom. I was very happy when I saw this dress.

On the first day of school I wanted to look my best and impress the other students. I wanted them to make friends with me, so I put on my fancy dress of lace. But when I got to school, all the students stared at me. They were laughing and saying something in English. I didn't know why they were doing this. I thought that maybe they had never seen an Asian girl in a dress before or that they wanted to make friends with me but were embarrassed to come over.

In the classroom an American teacher spoke English to me and pointed at my dress, but I didn't know what she was saying so I just smiled. The whole morning she didn't let me walk around or stand up. I had to sit all the way in the last row in the back of the room. During lunch, when all the other students had gone, an Asian teacher came into the room. The minute she saw me she spoke to me in Vietnamese. She told me that I shouldn't wear a nightgown to school,that in America people only wear nightgowns to sleep! I was so embarrassed that I almost burst into tears. That morning when I left home, I thought I looked good, but I didn't. Instead, I embarrassed myself on my first day of school. I felt like not going to school anymore.

This embarrassment taught me not to try to impress others or I might end up making a fool out of myself. I also learned the difference between a fancy dress and a nightgown!