"The week started with an amazing experience," said Thompson, who teaches English at the Saturn School, a magnet school that serves many students from the Twin Cities' Hmong-American community. The U-M students were volunteers from the Alternative Spring Break (ASB), a program that sends more than 300 hundred students across the nation to work in 32 community projects.

"A Hmong lady named See Vang," Thompson continued, "came to speak to the group, telling about her experiences coming to the United States and the difficulties of a new world. While we were eating, she kept looking at one of the Michigan students. Finally, she said, 'You look just like a woman that lived one village over from me in Laos. I think I know your mother. I can see your mother's eyes in your eyes. Is your mother's name Ka?'

"Maloree Yang could hardly believe it, and we could see the answer on her face. Later on in the evening, we had Maloree call home to Hazel Park, Michigan, and See Vang talked to her childhood friend for the first time in many years. It was an incredible moment for us."

Yang's parents fled the Hmong homeland in the highlands of Laos in the late 1970s. Up until the Vietnam War the Hmong (pronounced "Mung") had lived "an existence apart from cities," Thompson noted. Secluded farmers, few had any schooling; indeed, they had no written language until the 1950s, when Christian missionaries began to show them increased attention.

The Hmong were relatively late residents of the region, having come to Laos and Vietnam from southern China in the 16th century. After centuries of live-and-let-live neighborliness, they had the misfortune of allying first with the French colonialists and then with US military and intelligence units that recruited the Hmong to attack North Vietnamese supply lines in Laos. The Hmong became embroiled in a conflict that ultimately took the lives of perhaps half of their soldiers, according to some accounts.

After US troops left Southeast Asia In 1975, the Hmong were exposed to vengeful Laotian and Vietnamese enemies. "They had to escape from their country traveling in the dead of night," said Thompson, whose family has long been involved in Lutheran missionary work.

Sophomore Mao (Maloree) Yang was born when her mother, father and 4-year-old sister were scavenging for food as the family walked through jungles at night to reach the Thai border. They say that is why Maloree is the smallest of the seven Yang children.

After two years in a refugee camp, the Yangs gained admission to the United States through the sponsorship of Lutheran groups.

Most of the 200,000 Hmong immigrants have settled in Fresno, California. Minneapolis-St. Paul, with 30,000, has the second-highest population. The Yangs, however, had friends and relatives who had gone to Detroit, so that's where they moved.

"Maybe the greatest difficulty for the Hmong people" Thompson said, "comes in wondering why they are treated with so much contempt when their loved ones died believing their deaths were necessary to keep the people of the United States free from communism."

Thompson said that most of the older Hmong-American students at his school spent years in refugee camps where they received no schooling, and now live in homes in which English is heard only on TV or radio. "The Hmong students generally are hard working, conscientious and wanting to learn," he said. "They just need a helping hand. So, it was with great expectation and thankfulness that we welcomed the Michigan students here again. We knew they were giving up a week of play and relaxation to come and sleep on hard floors and work from early morning to late at night helping young people that they probably will never see again."

Maloree Yang plans to major in English literature and then teach in a school serving Hmong-American students. One of about 10 Hmong students at U-M, she found the visit to the Hmong community surprisingly moving.

"I thought I would know things better than the young kids," she said, "but I didn't. They knew our language and customs and history better than I did. My parents had always told me I should learn those things, but I ignored them. Now I see that they were right. This is one reason that we Hmong students here have started the Hmong-American Students Association to help us establish an identity among ourselves and also to promote awareness of the Hmong culture."

This spring was the second time that seniors Kelly Koay of Singapore and Christopher Olsztyn of Rochester Hills, Michigan, had spent spring break at Saturn School. As site leaders, they selected this year's group.

"Last year, going into their homes was sad for the students who were with me," Koay said, "because they had not been confronted with such poverty before. I was happy, though, for the opportunity to go into their homes and befriend them and learn about their way of life. My major is sociology, and to be able to experience their lives with them like that was rewarding."