New pictures

We've (finally) got some new pictures up on our photo album. Mostly it's just regular life stuff in and around Hanoi. We also took a trip across the river to Bat Trang, a village known for its handmade pottery and we took a few pictures there as well. To see them, click here.

Celebrate your Vesak

Banners are a big thing around here. If something even mildly exciting or out of the ordinary is happening, most likely it will end up on a banner somewhere. Most of the time, these banners are in Vietnamese and, therefore, basically inaccessible for us. But over the last month or so, a number of yellow and red English banners have been popping up all over town, usually strung across main avenues or near traffic circles.

Here's what the banners say: "The 2008 United Nations Day of Vesak Celebrations." Eh? While it's nice to have a banner to read in English, the main purpose of translating something into English (i.e. communicating something meaningful to English speakers) was lost on me. I understand what the United Nations is, and I understand what a day of celebration is, but I'm at a loss as to what a Vesak is or why on earth I should celebrate it.


I began to grow suspicious that perhaps this was just a made-up holiday--a ploy by greeting card makers and knick-knack vendors to get people to purchase their wares ("Have you bought your parents a Vesak Celebrations card yet? Did you see those cute new Vesak dolls in the market?") I decided to start doing some investigating. First, I asked people from our organization--Westerners who had spent a good amount of time in Vietnam and would likely be able to explain why these banners were up all around town.

The answers I received generally amounted to this: "I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with Buddhism." Not terribly helpful. So much for my Western experts. What I needed was a Vietnamese perspective on the Vesak issue. Things being what they were, though, I forgot all about Vesaks for a while until yesterday afternoon when we were chatting with our language tutor (in English) before our lessons started. Our teacher often has interesting life stories to share and has been a great source of knowledge about Vietnamese culture. Somehow during our conversation one of us mentioned a holiday and her face suddenly brightened.

"Oh!" she said, as if remembering something important. "Did you know that Vietnam has a holiday tomorrow?"

Seeing my chance to learn from a local expert, I sprang on it. "That's right. I've seen the banners up all over town. The 2008 United Nations Day of Vesak Celebrations, right?"

Our teacher nodded and smiled, clearly pleased that I knew what she was talking about. "Yes, yes." I waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. Perhaps, I thought, she assumed I was aware of all that a Vesak Celebration entailed.

After a bit of a pause, I continued. "Sooo....what is a Vesak Celebration, then?"

There followed a silent, thoughtful look from our teacher. Finally, an answer: "I'm not sure. I think it has something to do with Buddhism."

P.S. In desperation I finally turned to my knowledgeable friend Google and discovered that Vesak Celebrations indeed have to do with Buddhism. It's kind of a birthday/life/death celebration for Buddha himself. So there you go--no having to scratch your head in confusion if similar yellow banners start appearing in your hometown.

The last few weeks

Hey, it's been a while since we've updated the ol' blog, so we figured we'd just give a sampling of what's been happening over the last few weeks.

A couple weekends ago, we put on our old youth leader hats (not literally) and helped out on a youth retreat with our international fellowship. It was a good time with about a dozen youth from all over the world, though very little sleep was to be had. We came back rather tired, and (in another sign that he's becoming an old man) Steven proceeded to get a flu-like thing a couple of days later--fever, chills, headache--all that fun stuff. For her part, Joelle had sympathy sickness for about 14 seconds and was fine after that.

As I (Steven) was starting to recover from my flu symptoms, a nasty sore throat set in and refused to go away. Since we were headed to the clinic for follow-up X-rays of my broken thumb we just had the doctor take a look at my throat (which he figured was probably strep) and had some antibiotics prescribed. My thumb is healing fine, but I'm starting to get tired of health issues.

The school year is wrapping up here, which means that a lot of our team members will soon be heading back to their home countries for the summer. Since we arrived mid-year, we'll be among the few from our organization who stick around in Hanoi for the whole summer. From everything we've heard and experienced so far, it's gonna be a toasty one, for sure. One of the couples who's leaving for the summer has asked us to house sit for them while they're gone, and we've obliged. Since their family lives permanently in Hanoi and includes two children, their house is a wee bit bigger than our current studio apartment, plus we won't have to pay rent for a few months. We're definitely excited to get to know our new neighbors and a different area of town.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print for now. Do keep in touch, and keep checking back here. I'm sure something exciting will happen soon and when it does, rest assured it'll end up on the blog. Tam biet for now!