If you grew up with the Lao community in the heart of Minneapolis, the cozy and heavily stocked aisles of New Orient Market was a familiar scene. During the beginning of the resettlement period, many Lao Minnesotans would file in to get their hard-to-find Southeast Asian goods from the store, which also became a common gathering hot spot along Eat Street (Nicollet Ave). The market opened as the first Lao-owned grocery store in Minnesota back in 1982, by  Xay Ratsamy’s late father. Since then, it’s been a family affair, but Xay is yearning to return to the simple life of his countryside roots in Southern Laos. Among the giant sacks of rice, which became temporary arm chairs for our conversation, Xay looked back on his childhood in Laos and the first few years of resettling in the Midwest. How did you get to Minnesota? Tell me about your family’s journey from Laos. My family wanted to escape because we were scared and it was such an uncertain time. We came to America in 1980. I …