At 5 months old, Thi Lan Nguyen was put into an orphanage for malnourished kids in Hanoi, Vietnam. Her mother was working in a factory in China, and her father moved to the Czech Republic after she was born.

Her adoptive family decided to adopt after her adoptive father, Jim Lambertz, got in an accident that broke his neck and paralyzed him from the waist down. After extensive searching of companies, the Lambertz family found an adoption agency in Vietnam.

Six months after entering the orphanage, Jim and Cindy Lambertz, a family from Carroll, Iowa, chose Nguyen for adoption. On June 6, 1996, after a year of paper work, she was united with her new family and became Jenna Lambertz, but didn’t completely leave behind the name Thi Lan Nguyen.

Growing up in Carroll, a white German Catholic community, she realized that she was adopted by observing her surroundings.

“Looking back at drawings, I’d color myself with a brown crayon and they weren’t,” she said. “The Asian culture I have from home is the Chinese restaurant. Coming to Iowa State I’ve met some Asians, but I kind of felt like it’s not cool and would get kind of embarrassed. I didn’t know anything about [Asian culture], and people don’t embrace the Asian culture here as much as I thought.”

Now a fifth-year landscape architecture student, she got the opportunity last spring to go back to Southeast Asia for the first time since being adopted.

“In my program, your fourth-year spring semester is designated as a semester away,” Lambertz said. “Everybody had to choose between study aboard, student exchange or an internship.”

She’s always had curiosity in different countries and their culture, so this was a great opportunity for her to take advantage of the study abroad program at Iowa State.

After doing some research, she ran across an international gap year and study abroad program called Pacific Discovery, which had a two-and-a-half-month trip to Southeast Asia and included stops in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

She applied and got enrolled for the spring semester. On Jan. 27, 2016, she began her study abroad journey and went to Thailand with a Giving Key necklace, given to her by her friends, that had the word “hope” on it.

“You’re supposed to give it to someone that you think needs it or it would serve a purpose in their life once you’re finished with it,” she said. “I packed it with me with a bunch of pictures of me and my journal.”

When she arrived to Vietnam, she told her tour guide, Zeum, her story and gave him information from her adoption papers her adoptive mother had sent her via Facebook.

Overnight, he found a connection and sent a friend to go to the address of her birth mom to see if there were any family members still living there. They got in contact with her uncle, and told her family about Jenna and that she was in Vietnam and would like to meet them.

Zeum and the other guides kept it a secret for five days as they went on a mountain sea trip.

During Jenna’s one free day in Vietnam, Feb. 27, 2016, she went to see her biological family on the countryside of Hanoi, accompanied by Zeum, who was a translator.

“You have an understanding that you don’t need to speak the same language to have a connection,” Jenna said.

She described the house as “really small,” with only two rooms.

“I was welcomed with so many hugs from people my height who kind of looked like me,” she said.

The house was the same house that her grandmother and mother lived in. Her grandmother was still living there with her biological sister. Some of her aunts and uncles also lived near by.

One of her aunts she met was there when she was born.

“We had lunch and you could tell that they had prepared in advance,” Jenna said. “It felt like a celebration.”

She found out that her biological mom had died from lung cancer in October of 2011 and her father moved to the Czech Republic after she was born.

There is a podium memorial for family members who have passed away in the house, Jenna said. She got to pray to that for her mom.

“I came to peace because I was gifted with the rest of my family I can keep in contact with,” Jenna said. “She made the right choice. I’m grateful that she did decide to give another family a kid.

“All that love that would be there from my parents, were there by my family.”

Her uncle, Lich Nguyen, is a musician who makes his own instruments. He performed for her on his wooden flute and gave her a flash drive that had his music. He also asked for her to write something to the family on a laptop.

“I could tell they were my family,” Jenna said.

The day after she came back from Southeast Asia, she got the year 2011 in roman numerals tattooed on her arm. It’s enclosed in a circle of flowers, she said, because she came full circle when met her family. The flowers represent all of her family members, both American and Vietnamese.

Coming back to the United States, Jenna had a hard time adjusting initially. Her body had a hard time readjusting to the processed food, and she felt like people didn’t understand what she went through.

“Their lifestyles are so different, and so much about other people and giving, it made me re-look everything,” she said. “Appreciate things more, don’t let things get to me and be happier.”

Mostly, Jenna wants to thank Iowa State.

“You go on tourist groups, and you do the top 10 things they say to do in a travel book,” she said. “We got to dig deep into the culture and actually relate to the people of the country.”

All of her family members have a Facebook, so they still stay in touch. Even with the 13-hour time difference, she still finds time to video chat with her biological sister. She really wants to learn the language, to try and add a twist to her communication.

A step-by-step goal of Lambertz is to go back to Vietnam, learn Vietnamese and then learn dishes. Then down the road, she can teach her kids about their culture.

“I’ve always wanted to adopt, because that was such a cool experience,” she said. “The fact that I was given a second chance.”