Remember me?

Dear All,

I bet you thought that I had forgotten about this blog, huh?

Well, in a sense, you’re sort of right. Since the last time I posted (yes, all the way back in December) I have been completely swept up in all of the madness that is life, work, and travel in Vietnam which, coupled with completely unreliable and sometimes nonexistent internet, led me further and further away from even the thought of blogging. With work continuing to pile up here in the final stretch of my stay over here, I had somewhat resigned myself to the fact that my blogging days were over since the choice between making over to the market before sundown and gutting a chicken to eat for dinner and writing a post after a 10 hour work day clearly led to my stomach (and tired mind!) winning out. However, my guilty conscience, egged on by a few of the more vocal readers of this blog, has led to me taking a few moments on a misty Sunday afternoon to write you all again. Please don’t take my tone for bitterness, sarcasm, or unwillingness—I love sharing my stories and it makes me feel so blessed to have a group of people who are eager to read and ask for more and if I had the time (or the energy during my little free time) to write more, I certainly would!

So I suppose that the very obvious start to this post is to say that a lot has happened since I wrote you last. Rather than give you a minute by minute update of my life, I’ve decided to make list of some of the things I have done, seen, and learned during the past three months that stand out in particular to me. I’m going to post either one or two at a time so that the posts themselves won’t be too long, and so my writing goals are a little more manageable. I hope you’ll enjoy (and that I stick to my promise of making it through the list!):

Number One: Had the opportunity to buy cotton candy and other carnival-esque souvenirs at the Christmas Eve service in Thanh Hoa:
In the week leading up to Christmas, my students were unbelievably excited to learn about the secular Christmas traditions in the U.S. and I happily shared stories of Santa, Rudolph, and Tiny Tim (I actually acted out a short one-woman version of A Christmas Carol probably worth a Tony award to rave reviews from my audiences), gave presentations on holiday traditions in the States, and showed my class one of the only Christmas-related movies I could find in Hanoi: Home Alone. While, as I’ve mentioned before, Christianity (or rather, Catholicism) is somewhat tolerated in Vietnam and practiced by a small minority of its population in beautiful and large cathedrals built by the French, we, as teachers and employees of the State Department, were told to steer clear of any religion-based discussions for obvious reasons, so I kept everything I talked about related to the secular elements of the holiday which was very strange for me. I really missed being a part of a church community all throughout the beautifully contemplative season of Advent, setting up the crèche in my family’s living room, and preparing All Saints’ Chapel for the Festival of Lessons and Carols, and there was no one here with whom I could share those memories, or the feelings of sadness associated with missing out on such a season and process. Throughout the week, one or two of the students asked me “Ms. Hayley, do you believe in Jesu?” to which I responded with a smile and a simple “yes” and they often said in turn “you must be feeling very funny (a word misused for happy all the time here) at this time.”
After teaching my classes on Christmas Eve, I made packed my things to depart for Hanoi the next day and had just started making dinner when I heard my name being called from the street outside of my cooking area. I looked outside and saw my friends Chinh and Loan standing in the street and calling for me to come down and meet them. I put my dinner plans aside and went outside and they told me that we were going to the church for the Christmas service. Neither Loan nor Chinh is Christian so I was a bit surprised at their decision to go to the church until they told me that this was something almost everyone in the city did on Christmas Eve, regardless of whether they were Christian or not. Soon, I was excitedly sitting in a cab driving through the packed streets (they weren’t kidding—everyone was out that night!) When the streets became too crowded, we got out of the cab and started walking toward the church.
Some of the most fascinating things that I saw on the way were the Nativity scenes that were set up in the storefronts in the Christian area of Thanh Hoa (Chinh and Loan told me that a lot of the Christians—“believers in Jesu”--- lived nearby one another in the city). Rather than depicting the birth of Christ in a stable, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the whole gang of angels and animals were in caves in the Vietnamese scenes—I was absolutely floored and thrilled when I saw this because it serves as a perfect example of what I’ve discussed in my religion classes and on the front porch of Stirling’s with friends at Sewanee about a culture telling the story of Jesus in such a way as to have it make sense in their context—something that has certainly happened in Anglo-American societies and that was so exciting to see here in Vietnam. There are far more caves than areas for stables and mangers in Vietnam, so of course Mary and Joseph would have relocated to a cave in this setting! I stopped to study these scenes a few times and Chinh and Loan had to pull me along so that we would make it in time. When we arrived at the entrance to the church I took another moment to just stand in awe of all that was going on around me. Down the block there was a techno music party of sorts going on in celebration of the big night and all around me at the entrance to the church were vendors selling cotton candy, popcorn, t-shirts, toy Santas, and balloons with big Santa faces on them. People were also walking around taking pictures of everything and all of this combined for a rather carnival-esque feel to the whole event. Once inside the gates of the church I was met by a huge trailer on the back of a parked truck that had lots of small children wearing angel and Santa costumes in it and had a large neon-lit plastic star on a pole inside. Since there were literally thousands of people there, the church itself was closed and the service was being held outside on a stage that had been constructed for the event. A band was present, and there was a huge cave Nativity scene as well. We had to stand so far back from the stage due to the crowds that it was hard to see the priests in any detail but luckily there was a sound system that allowed people to hear what was going on even from so far back. Most of the people there were not all that interested in the service, but were attending out of curiosity’s sake or simply because it was a fun and interesting thing to see once a year, so the focus where I was standing was not on the service. We edged up a little ways, stood on our toes, and continued to watch as the Eucharist began. The mass was said in Vietnamese which I know precious little of, but I have seen the motions of a Eucharist being celebrated so many times that I knew what was going on and could appreciate its power even in such a strange setting. Chinh and Loan turned to me and said, beautifully, “we understand the words, but we think you understand what is being said—what is happening?” I did my best to explain what they were seeing in the simplest way possible and in response they smiled and said “do you miss your family tonight?” I gave them both hugs and said that while I did, I was so happy to be with friends and wouldn’t change this Christmas Eve for the world.
While I must admit that being at home for Advent and Christmas this year is one of the things I’m most excited about in terms of coming home, this experience, strange as it was, was also, as I told Chinh and Loan, truly unique, eye-opening, and a time I will never forget and that I am happy to have gotten to share with you. Well, I suppose that’s all for now—coming up next: Climbing a small mountain in the far north, and biking through the Angkor War ruins! I hope you are all well, and I can’t wait to be in touch again soon! Feel free to comment or write me an email directly (I do respond to those pretty quickly!)


Lots of Love,

Hayley