My Group Book Report

A few months ago I had a group book report assignment for school that needed to be about a different country, and we picked Vietnam. My classmates and I read books about the people and the country, and one of the questions was to interview someone who had lived in the country we picked for extra credit. I picked my great uncle who had served for a year in the army in Vietnam. I didn’t know very much about his time in Vietnam because it is not something that he talks about very often.

We called him one Sunday and asked him some questions about the climate and the culture there. He actually talked with us for nearly an hour sharing not only the answers to the questions that I had about the country and culture, but about the people and some of his experiences there.

I learned a lot from him about stuff for the report, but also some things about the war that I hadn’t read in the books. I found out things about how the different groups of people there got along. I found out that sometimes the mud was over two feet deep in the roads. I found out that you can ride a light vehicle over a land mine and survive, but a heavier truck that comes along next can blow up. I found out that if you use gasoline without diesel oil to get rid of latrine waste in barrels, it will explode and make a big mess. I found out a lot of things.

Ian
3rd Grade

Photo credits: Halong Bay, Vietnam, 2005.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cranrob/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0