Happy New Year!

First of all, we hope you had a Merry Christmas!

Second, Happy New Year. May your 2009 be filled with true peace, love, and joy.

We spent an eventful Christmas and New Year here in Hai Phong. The Bringases and the Daos shared a Christmas meal together on the Saturday before Christmas. Ruth and Manny prepared all the food, which included a huge baked chicken, yams, corn, veggies, and garlic bread, and we just had to show up with empty stomachs. You can see the food in the picture. We had a student over to enjoy the meal with us and we also sang some Christmas carols afterwards.

That morning before the meal, we took another hike up Thien Van Mountain. It was a very nice and clear day, and we got to enjoy the peaceful quiet fresh air away from the dusty and noisy streets of Kien An. The sceneries looking from the top were refreshing to the eyes. One special treat awaiting us on our hike down was a family of goats also making their hike up the slope. They were freely strolling on sidewalk, enjoying a nice day out together as a family. Looking at them reminded me of Tony, a co-worker back in the States, who once told me that he loved Lẩu Dê.

In my classes, the students were treated to a Christmas the American style. I had bought 13 Christmas songs and carols from iTunes and printed the lyrics on handouts. On the 22^nd and 23^rd I brought them into the classrooms, and the students got to listen to the songs during class. They were happy that they were spared of a real lesson on those days and just had to sit there to enjoy the music while merrily eating their snacks. Their two favorite songs were Jingle Bells and Jingle Bell Rock. In the meanwhile, Mike Ling, my crazy friend who’s biking Vietnam (www.mikelingcycling.com), was somewhere along the coast of Vietnam and also got to hear Jingle Bells everywhere he went. Both of us agreed that we were all Jingle Belled out by the time Christmas came!

Another special treat that we spoiled our students with during the Christmas week was live guitar and singing, featuring The First Noel and Silent Night. The students got a kick out of hearing their thầy pseudo-play the guitar with cô and em bé singing live. The following day, on the 24^th, all of us foreigners sang We Wish You a Merry Christmas and passed out little bags of treats to our students at the end of class. We also taught them the true meaning of Christmas.

Back in our dorm rooms in the afternoons and evenings, we had quite a few students come over to sing more songs and to help Ruth bake Christmas cookies. The girls especially love learning how to bake and decorate the cookies. Everything was new to them, and they enjoyed learning those little cultural lessons.

The evening of the 23^rd, we got to attend a special Christmas service at a local congregation. Quite a few students, both Vietnamese and Chinese, came with us to check out the event. We all walked there together. At the end of the service, it was quite dark and cold, I and a boy escorted two girls back to their rental house nearby. It was my first time seeing the inside of a student’s dwelling and the conditions in which they live. What an eye-opening experience that was! The two girls shared a bed in a small room that also included their little ‘desks’, a pseudo-kitchen, and a wooden wardrobe/armoire. The paint was peeling; there was no real insulation, so the temperature inside was the same as that on the outside; they also mentioned that rodents roam freely in the room. They boiled water for showers.

We had a lot of good interactions with the students, and by the time Christmas day came, we were all pooped out. So, we spent Christmas day sleeping in and recuperating back in our dorm rooms (I don’t have class on Thursdays). We had to teach the following day, and that also happened to be the very last day of instructions before final exams started. (Ruth and Manny actually didn’t want to teach on Christmas day, so they canceled their classes on that day and made up for them on a different day!)

Students also gave us Christmas gifts and cards, both individually as well as a class. They were so kind to their teachers. A few students also sent me their Christmas wishes through text messages, in Vietnamese as well as English.

That was our Vietnam Christmas. How was yours? Did we miss Christmas in the States? Some. But we’re here in Vietnam, and we’re thankful. We were thankful there was electricity this past week, and hot water too. It was nice to be able to share Christmas with the Vietnamese students.