Friday, January 1, 2010

Christmas and New Year



Christmas is not celebrated here nationally but Andy did get one day off for New Year and we did receive some presents from the University and students since we are foreigners.

The dry season started back in November so we've enjoyed being outdoor more. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Night, we walked with students to the Christmas gatherings and enjoyed meaningful and fun conversations and relationship building.

On New Year's Day, two students invited us to the newly opened shopping mall in town. It is the first shopping mall opened in Dalat. It has three stories with escalators. So it was actually the first time one of these students ever stepped on an escalator! Vietnam is indeed developing.

The bi-annual Flower Festival in Dalat happened to be going on during the New Years and so we spent the day playing tourists as well. Here are some pictures we've posted of the day.

Thousands of tourists are in town and all the hotels are full. We can see much effort has been put into this Festival. Students told us that the power will be shut down for the whole town after the Festival for a few days just to recover. I hope we'll be ready for this one!

1 comment:

Nate said...

Hey, Happy New Year and belated Christmas to you guys as well! Looks like you had a lot more fun than I did... I fell asleep at 11:30p :P

Anyway, hope this new year will bring you much happiness and wisdom :)