3 Ways to Style Poppy and Loom Tunics

So many women wonder if they’re young and trendy enough to wear these tunics. The answer is YES! The tunics are timeless. I guarantee you, they will make you feel confident and beautiful! These tunics are handmade, and embroidered by hill tribe Hmong women. They’re lightweight because they’re made out of hemp and cotton. You can dress them down, or dress them up! And the best part is, you're helping marginalized women show off their handiwork! Here are three ways to style them:

NEAT & TIDY

Tucked in, skirt, heels

TIE A BOW AROUND YOUR WAIST

Creating a more defined figure

OFF THE SHOULDER

For a little more glam.

CLICK TO SHOP HERE

Hospitality

I am so thankful for people with the gift of hospitality! Who doesn’t love to be on the receiving end of it? It’s part of the reason I love to travel. I’ve learned that hospitality in each culture looks a little different, but all in all, it’s about welcoming and accepting. In Asia (and probably other places) we show hospitality with food, in South America, kisses on the cheeks, and in Africa, tea (or coffee) and laughter.

(When I lived in Malaysia, I use to go Christmas shopping here!)

Today is Chinese New Year, so to those celebrating, Happy New Year! I was reminded of the importance of hospitality yesterday. A young Chinese man made almond cookies and he came up to me and told me he had made them to share for Chinese New Year. He brought Chinese New Year to me! I love when people don’t wait around for permission to share their culture. It is part of their hospitality to me… an intentional welcoming act of inviting me into his life.

How are you practicing hospitality today? How are you inviting people into your culture?

Refugees- "What they will ultimately find here is up to them... and all of us."

I love America! I know I don't say it, (or feel it) enough but after reading an article written about my family coming to the U.S., I feel it SO MUCH more now than I ever have.

I'm sharing this because this clip makes me laugh and will give you some context to where my parents were born.

Over Thanksgiving, my dad showed me a newspaper article about my family coming to America from Laos. The last sentence in that piece says,

"What they will ultimately find here is up to them... and all of us."

That hit deep. Humanity.... We belong to one another. Your well-being is up to me, and my well-being is up to you.

Immediately, I thought of all the middle eastern refugees piled in an airplane coming to America. I thought of the tropic-born, non-english speakers that I see in the mornings walking their kid(s) to school in 20 degree weather... (who I've stopped to pick up after a morning of not stopping, and my conscience being fully convicted!) I thought of how my own mother and father probably struggled to make sense of America as high schoolers. And also, the depth of grief refugees carry that you and I will never have to carry.

I am forever grateful for the people who took my family in and gave them a home, jobs, and an education. These seeds of kindness will never fail to see their fruit.

I'm going to type out the newspaper article for you (at least the parts about my family) because it'll be easier to read. But before I share it with you, I want to point out two things. My people, the Hmong, were such an unknown people group, (Thanks Suni Lee for making us REALLY popular this summer!) the journalist keeps referring to my family as Laotian. Also, the war the Hmong were involved in was so secretive that American journalists were only able to tell my family's story in part. It states that my uncle worked for an American firm, causing the family to flee for their lives. Like so many other Hmong refugees, their story is often that they (or someone in their family) were recruited by the CIA during the Secret War (go google it.) Considered traitors, they had to flee for their lives.

"COMMUNIST DEATH FEAR BRINGS LAOTIAN FAMILY TO U.S.A. AND FREEDOM" by Charles J. Adams (FYI: My uncle is being interviewed)

Twenty-year-old Yia Kue is alive today because he fled his native Laos and the communists who would likely kill him because of his ties with an American-owned company in his native city. At least that is Yia Kue's beliefs as expressed this week in an exclusive RECORD interview with the Laotian refugee and nine members of the three generations of the Kue family who now calls Reading their home.

The tiny pocket of Laotian culture and population on West Oley Street was created as a result of the efforts of the Vietnamese Catholic Community of Berks County, which sponsored the Gia Dinh Ti Nan Lao (Laotian refugee family) after the flight from a refugee camp in Thailand to freedom here. Freedom from the very stark fear of death was the most precious freedom for the Kue family. Yia Kue, at 20 the head of and spokesman for the family, had worked for Martin General Services, an American-based firm. This indirect tie with the West was enough, Yia thought, to mark him as an enemy of the new Hanoi-based communist regime of Laos. And, enough to mark him as a victim of the red bloodbath believed imminent in his beloved homeland.

The son of a farmer Yia Kue assembled the members of his immediate family and in the inherited right of sole decision-making, reasoned that the flight to freedom was in his and his family's best interest. His father, 51 year old Yong Seng Kue and mother, 49 year old My Her Kue, obligingly left the farmland of they family's long history and escaped the sweeping, death-dealing Pathet Lao.

Whether or not there was indeed a bloodbath-- whether or not Yia Kue would have indeed been killed is academic. The fear of such a fate was enough reason for the escape to freedom across the Mekong River to Thailand. But the situation became tense in Thailand. Another teetering bastion of liberty in S.E. Asia, Thailand soon became a frightening purgatory for the Kue family. Sponsorship by the Berks County group and the long journey to America was the only real escape for the ten Kue's. Freedom's flight landed the Kue family in a large, virtually unfurnished but quite hospitable row house in Reading's northwest. Surrounded by strangers speaking a strange language, living in an even more strange climate, and still adjusting to the lose-a-day super jet lag, the Kue family is now assembled in its new home. But the relocation is most certainly not the end of the story. It is only the beginning. The structure of the family is thus: Yia Kue, 20, is head of the household. Following his people's family structure, he speaks for all- even his elder father and mother, mentioned earlier. Yia's vo (wife) 18 year old Ka Vang Kue, and they have a beautiful contra (son), 51/2 Month old Ose Kue. Yia has three em gais (sisters), Yer Kue, 15; Shoua Mau Kue, 10, and You Mao Kue, 8. His em train (brothers) are sixteen- year old Toulue Kue (MY DAD) and 12-year old Tougeu Kue. The interview was arranged by a Vietnamese born priest, Father Yoang Van Tu, who is associated with St. Peter's R.C. Church in Reading.

... the very human story encompassing two continents, ten thousand miles and three languages surfaced clearly over the obstacles. Yia Kue, whose attitude and maturity believes his twenty years, told of the tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Laotian refugees who fled to Thailand but now face direct threats to their existence as the Thai government sways toward Hanoi. He predicts massive refugee movements from Thailand to France and the United States.

Leaving his homeland was not an easy decision. Because it was his home, he naturally wanted to stay. But the communist takeover made the future hopeless. He left friends, family and an entire way of life behind. Although most members of the three generation Kues managed to unite for the exodus, Yia says one sister still lives in Laos. He says, in a brief phrase of his limited English, "they were very crying" when they were left behind because of what Yia called a U.S. State Department mistake.

Most of his family lived in Long Chen, a town in northern Laos. It is far from and totally unlike Reading, Pa., the Kue family's new home. Arriving here on November 15, the family is only now adjusting to the changes in temperature and culture. They do not yet understand those who live around them.

They, like newborn babes, were introduced to the northern climes' phenomenon of snow on Monday afternoon.

Still, there are the intangible similarities that bond them immediately with their new neighbors. They may bow humbly with pressed palms instead of shaking hands, but the smile of welcome and trust is the same in any language. They may speak a foreign language, but Yia Kue's impromptu guitar-vocal rendering of "The Man from Galilee" is melodious and meaningful. They may face an uncertain future in a big, strange, cold and snowy new life- but the optimism in their eyes is assuring and indicates that they'll stick it out and pull themselves up. They've got a few friends helping to cushion their new life against the hard knocks sure to be ahead, and they could always use more. The Kue family came here to escape the wrath of the Pathet Lao. What they will ultimately find here is up to them... and all of us.