Santa Babies

Warning: This post is image heavy. Not dial-up friendly.

While there is a minority group of devout Christians in Vietnam, Christmas here is out and out an insanely commercial holiday. It is not a national holiday but it's still celebrated like consumerism is going out of style. All the stores had sales and lights and fake trees with fake presents under them were everywhere. In downtown district 1, there were displays with fake snow, Santa, reindeer, snowmen made out of Styrofoam and lights, and all sorts of other festive decorations. My friend Mike has some awesome pictures over at his blog of one display that included a giant foil cannon. Check it out.

There is also an enormous light display in district 1 that I tried to take pictures of last week, but the lights weren't turned on until the day after Christmas for some reason... Another major fail, in my opinion, was the "tree" made out of giant, fake Corona beer bottles at the beer garden next to my house. Alas, I do not have pictures. It was too tacky and sad to warrant photographic evidence.


One rather odd and interesting fad here is that little kids wear Santa outfits for Christmas. They range from cheap material to nice, velvety ones and can be bought on virtually every street corner. The boys wear actual Santa outfits with hats and belts, and the girls where Santa dresses. I have no idea where or how this started, and I find it insanely bizarre, especially because Santa is supposed to be an old man with white hair and a beard, but I have to confess that my students looked adorable in their outfits. One student (my favorite, actually) even had a little fake beard with his outfit.


We had a Christmas concert at the elementary school I work at last Wednesday, the day before winter break, and all the students wore these outfits. This was too cute not to have photographic evidence of. (Note: I teach at an international school so all the students have English names that they go by... And a few of them actually have English names as their real names.)

All of the students in the school, including the Vietnamese program.

Me with my main class.

Their classroom teacher bought them all presents. They went crazy opening them.

Tram Anh, my little 4 year old who doesn't speak any English aside from what I've taught her.

Kevin. He's my favorite.

Dean and Nick

Sebastian and Colin, with Tyler in the background

Tyler

Bill. He and Colin are twins.

Andy

John

Sebastian, singing in the concert

Somehow I ended up without a good picture of Christine, so here's one of her between Sebastian and Andy while they were singing in the concert.

One of the older classes also did two scenes from A Christmas Carol for the concert. Unfortunately, I don't have very good pictures of that, but here are a two:

Sam as Jacob Marley.

Beth as the ghost of Christmas past and Kevin as Scrooge.

I have a lot more pictures, but this post is already pretty full...


As for me, I spent Christmas day at my house, alternately cleaning my room, my bathroom, and the kitchen/living room floor and relaxing. I was invited to lunch at a friend's house, but the idea of spending Christmas with a room full of strangers made my stomach turn, so I didn't go. I did, however, get to talk to my family, which was brilliant. My dad has finally realized the advantages of turning on his Skype account as both he and one of my grandmas asked if they were seeing me in real time. Haha. Now let's see if he actually ever turns on his account. While my day wasn't exciting, it was still nice. Saturday's are my only days off, so I did what I always do.


I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and/or whatever holiday you celebrate, and that many good things come to you all in the new year. Much love.

Orange Bananas, Happy Mediums, and Water Puppets

The other day I bit into a banana and the inside was orange. It was the first time I've felt surprised in a long time, which made me realize that I've gotten used to Saigon. All the things that were once weird or out of the ordinary have become everyday, ordinary things to me.

Even things that don't happen that often don't surprise me. For instance, last Monday the power went off at school for more than four hours. This has never happened while at school. It's happened at home, but never for that long. So, I was annoyed, but surprised? Not even close. (My usually lively kids were sluggish, listless and petulant due to the suffocating heat. Suffice it to say, we were all miserable. We ended up making paper fans in class.)

I'm glad to feel so comfortable here that I've mostly forgotten I'm in a foreign place. Of course, I am still aware of the many differences between here and home, but I rarely think about them anymore. This must mean I've found a happy medium, right? I've moved beyond the "everything sucks" phase and have come out the other side unscathed. I must admit that I'm sad to be so far out of the "honeymoon" phase, but I'm definitely happy to be in a more steady space. The highs are no longer as high, but the lows aren't so low either, which is nice.

I suspect having found a middle ground is due in large part to settling into a routine. I have the same schedule, for the most part, every week: I work from 8 to 5, Monday through Friday, at the elementary school, have Saturdays off, and have the same three classes on Sundays. Occasionally, I substitute week nights. It's true that I work too much, but other than that things are good. The only weird thing is that everything seems so normal...

Happily, there are still out of the ordinary days, too. One such day was the Friday before last. My whole school went on a field trip to see a traditional Vietnamese water puppet show. It was so cool!

The school booked a private viewing, so we had the whole theater to ourselves. When the curtains opened and soft lights lit a red temple with a pool of gray water in front of it, I had no idea what to expect. Off to the sides of the stage sat the musicians and voice actors, who began with a song as dragons popped out of the water and danced around the pool.The show was in Vietnamese, of course, but I understood the story to be about a folk festival in a small town. Each scene was made up of different characters in the town, including a quarreling husband and wife, mating birds, water-spitting dragons AND fire-spitting dragons, a boat race, dancing maidens, and several other animated characters. Every part of it was energetic and fun: the voice actors were funny, the music was beautiful, the lights were colorful, water was sprayed onto the audience, and the characters ranged from jubilant to wry. The kids loved it. The teachers loved it. I loved it. All in all, it was a joyful experience and I wouldn't mind going again.

(Pictures to come soon.)

Một, hai, ba, yo!

Seeing as another year in my life has passed, I thought it only appropriate to distill my current adventure into numbers. (This is an exercise I did in a creative nonfiction class once. I shamelessly stole the idea from a friend's blog. Please note that not all numbers are "accurate." It is the idea of the numbers.)

Number of:

Days abroad: 110. Days in Saigon: 94. Trips I've taken: 3. Jobs: 2. Students: 65. Roommates: 2. Days off in a week: 1. People who say hello to me when I go on a walk: 15. People who laugh when I say hello back: 15. Cups of coffee a day: 2. Mysterious foods I've eaten: 12. Pounds I've gained: I don't want to know. Times I've been to the gym: 0. E-mails I've sent: 317. Times I've been sick: 5. Meals with rice: 101. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches: 64. Deaths: 2. Motobike accidents I've been in: 1. Almost accidents: 78. Motobike accidents I've seen: 1 (a surprisingly low number). People who stare at me: everyone. Postcards sent: 18. Letters sent: 2. Paychecks: 4. Dollars spent: too many. Favorite students: 4. Students I don't particularly like: 2. Vietnamese words I know: 52. Vietnamese words I say correctly: 0. Blog posts: 8. Blogs I read: 10. Books I've read: 1 (also a surprisingly low number). People in Vietnam: 86 million. People in Saigon: 7,162,864. Bugs I've killed: 2.3 million. Movies I've seen in theater: 2. Boat rides: 4. Times I've been called "madam": 88. Times I've been called "mister": 10. Days it has rained: 100. Days it has been cool: 0. Times I've thought, "I love it here": 8. Times I've thought, "I hate it here": 10. People I miss: everyone. Times I've wondered what I'm doing here: 0. Daydreams about Scotland: 22. Questions: 1,017. Answers: 2. Possibilities: countless. Years in my life: 23.

This could go on forever and I might come back to it again, but I think this is enough for now.

Note: the title of this post is a Vietnamese drinking toast. It translates as, "One, two, three, drink!"