Chuc Mung Nam Moi!!!!

Chuc Mung Nam Moi! (Happy New Years). Sunday was New Year’s Eve here and Monday New Years Day and let me tell you….the Vietnamese people go ALL out for the TET Season. Each morning at around 6:30am, the parades start all over the city with red dragons, drums, and guys in crazy masks. They go up and down the streets and stop in each house to do some type of “good luck dance.” Everyone leaves their doors open (the doors are mostly just screens anyways), and families gather in the entry room to await the parade.

So anyways, on Saturday, I met Erryn and Fred, the other volunteers staying at the house and working at the orphanage. I met Erryn for coffee and then we spend the whole day going around the city together. She’s been here for 10 days already, so it was great to get all sorts of advice, tips, suggestions, and ideas from her! We walked around the Ben Thanh area and had lunch at a cute café called Rap and Roll. We shared dried pork spring roll and some type of lettuce wrap with egg, pork, prawns, and veggies inside. Very tasty! She then showed me the backpacker’s district which is a great place to hang out, people watch, and meet other travelers. We then walked through the central gardens and down the main strip, which is incredibly decorated for TET. I can’t even describe the decorations, but I’ll have to post pictures. There are hundreds of thousands of flower displays, statues made from flowers and straw, waterfalls, little bridges…it’s like they’ve created a whole miniature world in the middle of the street! That night we went up to the Rex hotel rooftop bar and we ended up having the best view of the whole city with the streets PACKED as everyone looked at the displays. For those of you who have seen my pictures of the streets during Carnival in Brazil – this was extremely reminiscent of that! We met a few other travelers and I took everyone to Apocalypse Now, a bar that is infamously frequented by Semester at Sea kids! We sat at a table with a few locals and had a great time all getting to know each other! It really struck me that between me, a 34-year old who’s here with her dad, a 20-something guy on vacation from his job with the military in Afghanistan, and a few 30-something Vietnamese men, we all had a lot in common and never ran out of things to talk about! Small world I guess…

Sunday was New Years Eve, and Fred (one of the volunteers here) wanted to cook an American lunch for some boys at a shelter for street kids. So we went over there in the morning, cooked chicken wings, salad, chicken noodle soup, and rolls – they loved it! At one point they needed some more rice vinegar for cooking, so I walked with 2 of the boys to the market. The older one was trying to learn English and I’m trying to learn Vietnamese (well….kind of!), so we taught each other a few words and phrases. I learned to say Happy New Year (Chuc Mung Nam Moi) and count to 100. I taught him weather words like hot, cold, rainy, sunny. After we ate, there were some older Vietnamese men sitting around a table eating and celebrating. They invited Fred, Erryn, and I over to the table, and before we knew what was going on, they were giving us more food and drink than I thought my stomach could possibly handle. This was over 24 hours ago and I’m somehow still alive and even better, not sick, but when you hear about some of this, it might be hard to believe! I ate chicken (the head and claws were in the serving bowl), a wedge of some type of animal fat and ground up other substances, oranges (yum!), pickled garlic bulbs, Kim Chi (fermented cabbage or something), and a few other things I couldn’t even pretend to identify. They just kept dishing stuff into my little bowl, hooting and hollering, laughing as we tried it, and screaming “Happy New Year.” I thought I had handled my disgust pretty well when one of the wives brought out a bottle with a silk cover over it. It was “unvielded” and I literally gagged as I noticed the dead snake in a bottle of liquor. WHAT? Yup, this is a true story… The tradition is they pour a shot, and the person who poured it picks a partner to “shot share” with. Because I’m extremely pale and pasty right now (which is intriguing to Vietnamese…gross!), I got picked first. He took half a shot and handed it to me. There were floaties!!! No joke, little thiiings floating around (snake scales maybe?)and they wanted me to drink it. I tried to politely decline but that didn’t seem to be an option. So I took a deep breath, showed them that my hand was literally shaking, took the shot, and screamed! I honestly can’t believe I did it, but I’m SO proud of myself now! Haha. That night was New Years Eve so we bought tickets to the Rex viewing party. Shany (the volunteer from Australia) arrived, and I took her to the hotel where we met up with Fred and Erryn. The celebration was incredible and so elaborate….a fashion show, dragon dancing, drum lines, fireworks, live music, etc.

Monday was New Years Day, so most places were closed down, as the Vietnamese tradition is for extended families to spend the day together in their homes. We went to the orphanage this morning (because they obviously cant close), helped with the morning feeding, played with the kids, took some priceless photos, and put them down for naptime. I was extremely bothered by seeing how some of the staff members treat the kids, but I’m going to wait until I’m going there on a more regular schedule to really form any judgments. I’ll stay optimistic and hope I just saw a bad day. Anyways, the children are undeniably adorable, and I absolutely love being there with them. I know a lot of you have bets on how many kids I’m bringing home….if you’re number was under 2 – you’re wrong…I already picked out my first two this morning! One is a 5 year old boy who has normal mental development but is completely non verbal. He just sat and stared at me all morning and had this little sparkle in his eyes that was captivating! The other one is a little girl, Lihn, maybe 7 or 8 years old, and has Down Syndrome. She’s literally a little monkey and will find a way to be attached to you no matter what. While I was feeding another little boy, she literally snuck up from behind and pounced on my back. I think I’ll add at least to kids to my list each day. So….by the end of my time here I’ll have a list of like 80 kids to adopt, and at that point, it’s it better to just bring all 400 of them home? Too bad I’m half way serious. :)