A Great Week

This week has been pretty good so far; I'll talk about each day but focus on Thursday because we got to go on a field trip with some of the other classes at the school! Anyway, on Monday we started with our morning assembly in the gym. In student performances this week was a cute trio of girls from grades 1-3 who did a well choreographed dance, and my friend, Quang Minh, who sang a popular Vietnamese song. I of course, didn't know the song but many other students sang along and we all cheered loudly for Quang Minh when he was finished. A few periods into the school day, about 10 of my classmates left for some meeting they had with the principal so during physics, our teacher let us have free time instead of doing the lesson. We ended up playing charades which was fun and I was even able to guess a few of the actions in Vietnamese! Other than that, Monday was a typical day; Anna and I went out for our nightly walk to the slides and I stopped at a bookstore in the Ecopark to buy a notebook for class.

It seems as though we were destined to not do physics this week because on Tuesday, the literature teacher was a whole period late. Instead of doing one literature period instead of two, she taught all the way through our physics period so we again, had no physics class. This was a little disappointing for me because I very much prefer physics to literature but I went with it, and we followed the schedule for the rest of the day. In the evening, Anh talked a lot through dinner. I usually communicate more with Dung since we can better understand each other but because she was gone, I got to hear some funny stories from his childhood. He told me about this tradition he and his friends had when they were kids. At only 10 years old, they would go down to the river and catch eels in these big hooked nets. Then, they would take the eels and put them in a smaller pond all together and in a few months after the eels had grown, they would gather their families, catch all the eels from the pond, and cook and eat them! It was amazing to hear such a crazy story because I know that I would have never done anything like that as a kid. It was also nice to get to talk to Anh more because when Dung is home he usually stays later at work and I don't get to see him as much. We laughed about how crazy his story sounded to me and he told me more stories about his childhood in Vietnam. It was nice to talk to him then because after dinner he took Anna to a birthday party and wasn't home until much later.

Wednesday was probably the best day of the week. It seems to have been getting cooler (though I don't want to jinx it) and so Wednesday started out as a nice day, weather-wise. We had "soft skills" which has sort of morphed into a philosophy class and we've recently been learning about philosophy as represented through music. Our lessons basically consist of the teacher playing a long list of songs for the duration of the period so while I don't really understand what the meaning of the songs are, it's nice to just sit and listen to music instead of a lecture. We had English after philosophy and then Geography following that. As I mentioned last week about Chemistry, we had a test and when it was passed back on Wednesday, I saw that I had gotten 100%! I also started to understand more about the lesson (probably because I remembered what I learned in my chemistry class at Garfield) but nevertheless, it felt good to write down the notes and actually understand what they meant without having to translate them word for word. I was also able to complete the entire worksheet correctly without asking any questions. The chemistry class definitely lifted my spirits as did the computer class, which is always a good end to the day. I like computer class because we get to use computers during the whole period and I actually know how to do many of the things we're learning.

As we usually do in the evenings Anna and I had planned to go walking but a huge storm came in right around dinner time and rain pelted down until long after we finished. Like last week, there was lighting until probably 1 in the morning (though I wasn't up that late), and the rain managed to bring in a cool front for Thursday.

This brings me to our field trip this morning! We were told about the field trip on Monday and I was excited to be able to go somewhere new with my classmates! To my disappointment, the destination was the "Temple of Literature" or "1st University of Hanoi" where I went with Dung during my first day in Hanoi. Though I was less excited about the excursion because I'd already been before, we had a slightly

different schedule with a ceremony at the beginning of the visit, and free time to roam after the ceremony, which ended up being very fun. The ceremony was given by a man in traditional clothing and involved words spoken by him that were interspersed by drum and gong hits. At first, I could distinguish no discernible pattern to the drum but as the ceremony went on, it started to flow more. During the ceremony, a few students from my class and some of the teachers stood up to put incense sticks into the bowl at the altar in front. Though I didn't understand most of what was said, it was interesting to watch and experience the ceremony and after the man had finished his part, a woman in a traditional Vietnamese dress called "ao dai" stood up and welcomed our school to the Temple. They had even made a sign to commemorate our visit. After the whole thing ended, we took pictures on the steps (I included a picture of me with my class), then had free time to walk around the grounds and temple.

I explored with Ha and Trang and saw some new things that I hadn't seen during my first visit. I chatted with a couple from London and took a few pictures of them in front of the elaborate shrine to the temple's creator. Trang, Ha, and I stopped to listen to some performers playing some beautiful music on traditional Vietnamese instruments. We stayed and listened until it was time to go then headed back to the buses. With multiple students sharing seats, we managed to cram our whole class into one bus - on the way to the temple, The Anh, and Nhi rode in another bus. When we got back, it was nearly time for lunch and because I had my camera for the field trip, I managed to get a photo of a typical lunch at school. Today we had fried chicken, a spring roll, our typical (giant) serving of rice, and a vegetable that we eat a lot of, though I'm not sure of the name. In the center dish on my tray is a tomato based sauce that they put out to eat with the chicken, though I like to spoon it over my rice. For our fruit dessert we had my favorite, watermelon.

After school I saw Dung for the first time since she arrived from Malaysia and it sounded like she had a great time. While she was there, she even got me a really nice, blue sweater! It's for the winter of course as it's still way too hot to wear outerwear at the moment but it will be nice to wear when it gets colder. This evening due to the lunar calendar celebration, my whole host family will be out at their downtown house, Anh's parents house, and the house they rent out in

the city. They're doing a ceremony that involves putting out goods and food out and a lot of praying. I'll have to ask more about the meaning and details of the ceremony tomorrow when they're back. In the meantime, I'm on my own for dinner and now I've just got to decide what I'm having.

I don't know how the weekend will go yet, I've asked to take language classes though the scheduler hasn't responded so I'm not sure if I'll have class or not. Regardless of the class, I'm sure we'll go swimming as we usually do on Sundays and I'll have a post up too. Thanks for reading and enjoy all the photos from our field trip today!

Update: I made stir fried beef, stir fried peppers and carrots, and "potato chips" - inspired by my dads oven roasted potatoes - for dinner. It was delicious.