More Updates

It seems a little weird at this point to continue the highlights from my last blog but here are some quick highlights.

Sunday Sept 19---Visited a temple with my host family.  It was a very interesting experience.  There were crowds of people inside and a priestess was doing ceremonial rituals and dances.  I think she was being possessed by the spirits of the ancestors.  There were also musicians inside playing music.  But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Afterward, they all got on a boat.

Oct 3---As I was leaving for church, my host brother asked if he could come.  It was the first time he had ever gone to church and I'm sure he was just as bewildered as I was at the temple.  Now why are these people singing? Why are they all of a sudden standing up and shaking everyone's hands?  Why are they lining up to eat bread?

Oct 7---Bryn and I attended a festival for Hanoi's 1000 year anniversary.

 A lot of people.

Oct 16---Bryn (the other SALTer) and I went with a colleague, her sister, and her sister's friend to Bat Trang Village which is a traditional pottery village.  It was a lot of fun.  We checked out ceramics and also got a chance to make and paint our own pottery. 

So another 1000 year anniversary for Hanoi has come and passed. For some reason I expected the day to be like New Years Eve at Time Square, thousands of people huddled together amidst fireworks and light shows. To be fair, there were light shows, fireworks, and performances, it was just too difficult to get to them.  Also, my family and friends had other plans, so I spent lunch eating at the house of a girl who I'm teaching English and dinner at my host family's cousin's house watching the ceremony on the TV.  It was a good time. For dinner, I got the chance to try snails and jellyfish for the first time. For lunch, mats were spread out and we ate together on the floor of the living room.  A couple days earlier my host family did the same for my father's friends from Loas who came to visit.  That was definitely an interesting experience.  Only a couple of them could speak Vietnamese so my father looked to me to speak English with the rest. I also enjoyed seeing other people as the guest for a change.

Here are some other highlights from the past weeks:

Last Thursday we had the day off because roads were blocked due to the 1000 year celebration.  I decided that I was going to try and go out of Hanoi.  My plan was to see the countryside.  Bryn had a gone a ways towards the outskirts of Hanoi with his host brother once and told me that it didn't look any less urban.  However, I was still determined.  A couple of days ago, Bryn and I talked with a student in a semester abroad program here.  He was surprised that Bryn and I had been here a month and had only seen Hanoi.  That encounter convinced me that I at least needed to see the outskirts.

I got on my motobike and decided to take a road that went Northeast.  I had soon driven off the edge of my map of Hanoi.  I went over a bridge and ended up in an area significantly less developed.  However, there were still dozens of shops squished together on either side of me.  However, these small shops soon turned into tall thin buildings, identical to the ones found around my area.  The road turned became surrounded once again by small shops and then once again by tall buildings.

Finally I saw fields on either side of me and small hills looming in the distance.  Sure, there were buildings about half a mile up ahead, but they were smaller and half constructed.  As the road turned into dirt and I passed by  buildings I grew more excited.  Up ahead the road dipped into trees.  I drove faster, anxious to see what awaited on the other side. Maybe this would be it, I would finally break out of these concrete confines and HOLY COW! WHERE DID THAT HUGE HOTEL COME FROM?!

After breaking free from the highly urban streets of Hanoi, I seemed to have entered a continuous loop.  I would drive through a rural type area with dozens of small shops until I hit open fields on either side of me for about half a mile.  There would be an old Vietnamese man or woman by the side of the road selling sunglasses.  Then I would enter into what I presumed was another town with tall, half constructed buildings and dirt roads.  Then I would drive by a big hotel or civic center.  I would pass temple and altar sights and then be back in a small rural area with dozens of small shops.  The road had become a mobius strip.  Shops, fields, old man selling sunglasses, construction, development, temples, shops, fields, old woman selling sunglasses, construction, development, temples, schools, shops, fields... I felt like Alice in Through the Looking Glass when she tried to run as fast as she could but kept ending up back where she started.

However, I realized that if perhaps I turned off the road, I could possibly escape into the "countryside" or at least into a significantly less urban area. But since I didn't have a map of the area, and my host family expected me home in a couple of hours, I kept going straight until I passed a sign saying "Welcome to Bac Ninh" and drove under a large overpass.  Later, when I would tell people that I drove to Bac Ninh (which is another province and the name of the capital of that province although I'm not sure whether I actually entered Bac Ninh the city or just Bac Ninh the province), they would ask if I heard any traditional singing when I was there because Bac Ninh is famous for its singing.  I would say, no I kind of just drove there and drove back.  Which is what I did.  Once I hit the overpass, I headed back.  

...(more highlights coming soon)