Christmas In Vietnam

Christmas Eve I went out for dinner with my new friends, John, Hien, Nhan, Ha, Hanh and Huyen. We ordered chicken (almost turkey) and rice (almost mashed potatoes and gravy) in a local restaurant with a Christmas tree.


Afterwards we went to the local Catholic Church for the Christmas Eve service. Nhan and I had dropped by earlier in the afternoon to check out the place. It had a cave with a creche, and several Christmas trees. It looked even better that night in the dark with all the lights.
My wonderful new friends gave me gifts to open tomorrow. I am so lucky to have found such wonderful people over here. It makes this Christmas a very special one. I wish all my friends and family in Canada a Happy Christmas and a Joyous New Year.

Uniterra Meets in Ha Noi

The week of Dec. 12 to 19, I spent in Hanoi. I took the train up with Marilyn, she picked up the train an hour before me in Thanh Hoa, and we arranged to be seated beside each other.

We picked up a reliable cab, but got someone not familiar with our hotel's location. That happens alot here, but we arrived safely and treated ourselves to beer and western sandwiches!!


Saturday started late but got going quickly. We decided to go to the local salon, get on nails and hair done.

A great way to spend a few hours, then it was off to pick up some clothing Marilyn had made for her on an earlier trip.

By then my eye was bothering me again and it was time to see a doctor. For those of you not in this loop, this was my third eye infection in 8 weeks.

This time I got the specialist and you know how they are. Before I knew it, he had stuff an needle around me eye, clamped it open, and was slicing away. Have you ever tried to "not" see when your eyes are wide open??


Needless to say it bruised and I have included an early picture. A friend from Vietnam got me a hard boiled egg, peeled it, and had me rub it over the bruising. His mother told him it would bring out the bruise. I'm not sure it worked, but the heat sure felt good.







We had 2 days of meeting with Uniterra volunteers and staff. It was good to meet everyone, some old friends, some for the first time.

Most of us stayed in the same hotel and went out together for meals and stuff.





On Tuesday, Micheal and his wife, Wusc director here, invited us over for Christmas dinner and songs. It was great.





Some of us went to the Army Museum. What you see are captured American planes from the
Vietnam War. Very simple but effective display. The black and white postcards from that era are extremely powerful.

ESL in Hai Phong

In December I went to Hai Phong to do a one week workshop on ESL. My translator Nhan went with me to help out. A good thing, as the level of English of many of the English teachers was not very good.

On our arrival we checked out the school. The initial room was a room with lots of chairs with attached desks, not what I wanted for group activities. We ended up on the third floor of the administration building, just above the loudspeaker. Breaks were given whenever the loudspeaker decided to play music!!

I had told Mr Long that 30 was a good number for the workshop and had prepared accordingly. But on Monday, we had 34, so scrambled to get matching pictures and words for the first activity.

This workshop was conducted in English and was a real make and take workshop. I taught English songs like BINGO, TEN FINGERS, HOKEY POKEY, OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM, and games like WHAT TIME IS IT MR. WOLF? and we made flashcards, calendars, sentence strips, etc. An action packed week. From what I understand, the teachers told their friends, and we always had new teachers in the workshop.

At the end of thew workshop I invited in a fellow volunteer John to be a guest speaker of English. He was so well received, that he has already been asked to speak at several of the primary schools!!

The school I taught at was only 20 minute walk from the hotel so we rented a motorcycle. The traffic was horrendous and I was glad I wasn't driving.

When we weren't teaching, we walked the streets of the third largest city in "Vietnam". We were only 2 blocks from this park-like avenue that ran for 2 kms through the city. It was green space with flowers, trees, statues, water features including a large pond. An oasis in the city. We also found 2 lovely pagodas, with turtles in the ponds.