Chấn Nguyễn recounts his experience as a foreign exchange student to the United States as part of Vietnamization. The blog ends with him arriving in Utah which is the event described in the chapter The Valley of Fog in To Distant Shores.

“I always felt like that day that we left Vietnam was the exact point where we reinvent, we redefine who we are. There was a point where … I started having this dichotemy of identity, or a double perspective of who I am.”

“So when I got out [from Camp Pendleton], university wasn't a question for us because the cost is so high for non-resident... So the first thing we did was we tried to find jobs to sustain ourself and help the family. Some of the friends told me that you just walk around El Cajon Boulevard and went to any restaurant and ask for dishwashing job.”

“There I came to understand the American work ethics. I worked side by side with the American sailors. They were clean and beautiful, toiling from morning till evening; sincere and without rest. They were very conscientious.“

When we were at Pearl [Harbor], we started to pick up that something was going to happen. The USS Hancock, aircraft carrier, was in Pearl and they were taking all of their of their attack and fighter aircraft, the white, we call them the white planes, the attack and fighter airplane off.