Birthday party in the 'burbs

The transition for us from living in Nooksack (population approximately 850) to Hanoi (population 3 million plus) has been a bit of a system shock to us, so this past weekend we were glad to escape for a while from the hustle and bustle of central Hanoi.

Saturday morning we hopped in a taxi with our country director David and his family and headed toward the other side of the Red River into what you might call the Hanoian suburbs. Our destination was the house of a family that David and his wife have known for several years--Vietnamese mother, American father and two kiddos. They were celebrating their eldest daughter's 8th birthday party and David and family were nice enough to invite us along as they thought (correctly) that we might need some time out of the big city.

It was the first time in almost a week that we had seen a house with an actual lawn, surrounded not by miles of concrete but by small neighborhoods interspersed with fields, orchards and pagodas. The party was attended by people from the US, Holland, Germany, Burma, South Africa and (of course) Vietnam--a fairly international crew.

Our activities included a group walk/run down the road to some guava orchards in the floodplain of the Red River, as well as numerous silly games.

The main attraction, however, was a virtually indestructible pinata, made by the dad and his daughter out of papier-mache and bamboo strips. Even after all of the kids and all the adults had taken their swings at it, the thing still needed to be ripped apart by hand to get to the goodies. (Pinatas are not really a Vietnamese cultural phenomenon, in case you were wondering.)


All-in-all it was a good chance for us to be introduced to life (a little bit) outside the big city and to begin to get more of an understanding for the country we find ourselves living in.