Christmas can be weird here too.

The newspaper article quoted below is about Ho Chi Minh City, but it's similar in Hanoi - if you take out the religious part because about the only thing you see up here are lights, trees and Santas. It's kind of depressing.

The festivities climax on Christmas Eve, when it seems that half the city's 9 million residents take to the streets for something akin to a holiday rave. Churches overflow for midnight Mass while Vietnamese outside drink beer and spray each other with fake snow. It can take two hours to travel a few miles in District One as everything comes to a virtual standstill.

"Vietnamese want to integrate the country with the international society," said Che Huyen Bao Vy, wearing reindeer antlers and angel wings at a holiday display outside another shopping center in District One. The 21-year-old college student, along with two other reindeer angels, stood next to a blue Santa.

"I don't practice the religion, but I enjoy the Western culture a lot," she said. "Christmas Day, the Christmas spirit, is happy. It's a Christmas-spirit thing."

from "Vietnam Catches the Christmas Spirit."

I Love Tết (but I missed it)

Tết, the Lunar New Year festival, is a time when life in the city calms down and everyone seems to be in a good mood. Hanoi is noisy and over-crowded, but when everyone heads back to their hometowns for the holiday it's so peaceful! (Imagine what it would be like if everyone in NYC or Atlanta whose roots were in another city left town for a week.)

I've come to really enjoy the peace and quiet of Tết but this year I missed it because I spent the 2-week school holiday with my kids and grandkids in Hawaii where our youngest daughter lives. No regrets, though. There will be another Tết, if I live that long, but I don't always have the chance to be around when my grandkids are born.

Christmas 2009

For the first time, Christmas in Vietnam seemed as hectic as Christmas in the United States. Many people in Hanoi have begun to celebrate Christmas as a time to have a party. Unfortunately, most don't seem to "get it" any more than I understand the reason for having a party on St. Patrick's Day.

Two "Vietnam: Christmas traditions have developed for Nancy and me. One is making Christmas cookies with students. It's incredible how artistic they can be.

The other, which dates back to the 2007 VTF team, is helping to wrap and deliver presents for the preschools sponsored by CAMA Services. (The kids memorize lines from the Christmas story and put on a little play.) It wouldn't feel like Christmas in Vietnam without it.

 

(L to R) Innkeeper, Mary, Joseph

Shepherds and Angels

Magi

Family Far Away

Ahh, internet! Both time-waster and tool. One of the great advantages of it is being able to stay closer in touch from so far away. When we first came to Vietnam, calling America was prohibitively expensive and kept for emergencies only. Our dial-up email connection was a luxury.

Although the $20/month ADSL connection we have now doesn't seem much faster than dial-up, it's nice to be able to be able to send photos back and forth and stay in contact with VOIP and webcams. We've been able to peek in on our granddaughter, Ellie, putting together an aquarium with her dad after he got back from his six months at sea. We've even seen the first grainy ultrasound image of grandchild #2 who's due to liven up Hannah and Phillip's house next summer.

But what's even better is having a friend like Ellen, who has a heart a mile wide. With Beth and Dave planning to visit NY at the beginning of December, Nancy hatched a plot to get some Christmas presents delivered to Ellie. She asked Ellen if she'd be willing to pick up some gifts and bring them over to the house if we sent her some money for the gifts. (We're pretty sure she spent more than we sent, but that's how generous she is.) Ellen shopped, wrapped, and delivered the gifts and sent pictures too. It was closer than we ever expected to being there.

Ahh, internet. Now I've got to get off it and back to planning next week's lessons.

Where's Your Flag?

That's what a rather eccentric old woman asked me when I got home from a meeting at the Academy yesterday afternoon. September 2 is Vietnam's "Fourth of July" -- the anniversary of the day back in 1945 when Ho Chi Minh read Vietnam's declaration of independence from France. As on all the other national holidays, most of our neighbors fly the flag.

"Tell your landlord to get you a flag!"

I didn't call the landlord, but the conversation did shed a little light on one of those still-unanswered questions I've had: Should I display a flag on holidays to show respect or would it be too weird since I'm an "outsider"?

Nhập gia tùy tục is a proverb which has pretty much the same meaning as the English, "When in Rome...."

Maybe I should get a flag.

Easter Party

Easter's more of a church-going event than a party one, but an Easter party is a good way to introduce students to an important holiday that few of them have ever heard of. Even if they don't know the Christmas story, they at least know about Christmas. Easter, on the other hand, is almost totally unknown.

The first big question the 7 of us on VTF faced was, "How can we do an Easter party for all of our students?" We've got a total of almost 30 classes this semester with most class sizes hovering around 30. Nine hundred students?!

But, at this point in the year, we kind of know which students we've been able to build relationships with and who may be the best ones to invite. So we decided that we would each invite 3 students. Seventeen showed up.

A few of the teachers hid eggs in the garden on campus. Nancy and Melia stood guard while the rest of us met the students out front. (While we were waiting, a little girl discovered a couple of the eggs and was about to start smashing them till our "guards" intervened!)

The plastic eggs contained strips of paper with parts of the Easter story written on them. The rest of them were hard-boiled. After they were all found, we headed to our house where Josh and Melia helped half the group dye eggs while Deena told the other half the story and then had them put the strips in order. Then we switched groups and repeated the process.

No Vietnamese student party is complete without singing so, after singing "He Lives!" in both languages (and an assortment of other songs that have nothing to do with Easter), we all called it a night. It couldn't have gone smoother and it was great to have a house full of students again.

Signs of Easter Are...

...nowhere to be found.

At least not like you see signs of Christmas. The commercial side of Christmas has definitely made its way to Hanoi, but that's not the case with Easter. Three months ago, life-sized plastic Santas stood in front of shops with their motorized arms waving and pre-recorded, "Ho, Ho, Ho's" bellowing. Sidewalk vendors were selling Santa hats. Toy stores stocked artificial Christmas trees, stuffed St. Nick's and tinsel. But I can't find plastic eggs anywhere.

On the non-commercial front, it is encouraging to see a large resurrection mural on the front of the city's large Vietnamese Catholic church. Friday night the two International churches in Hanoi got together for a service. Anticipating more people attending than usual, HIF had two identical services on Sunday morning. Monday night VTF is banding together for some egg-dying with students and the deeper story of Easter.

Saturday night most of the Hanoi teachers, and a few from out-of-town, got together at the director's house to share a meal and talk a bit about what Easter means to them. A couple of people mentioned what it's like to tell the story in simplified, understandable English to people who are hearing it for the first time. In that setting it's easy to be talking and thinking at the same time - telling the story while thinking, "This sounds crazy! Do I really believe this?"

I do. Aside from the historical evidence and my belief that it makes sense philosophically, I know the difference the Resurrected One has made in my life.

I guess there are signs of Easter after all.

VTF Santas Part 2

Deena was able to go down to Ha Nam province with the CAMA Services staff on December 18 to hand out the gifts we wrapped. I finally got around to putting it on YouTube. What you don't see is the older kids acted out the Christmas story in Vietnamese.

VTF Santas

One Wednesday morning, we all went over to CAMA Services and helped them pack up hundreds of presents for the kids at the preschools they work with. Each package contained: two pair of socks, a winter hat, a bar of soap and a small hand towel. That may not seem like much, but where these kids live the per capita income is about $200 per year.