Christmas

Who would have thought that writing a blog about Christmas would be so labourious. Well it is. It is now New Year’s eve, and I am forcing myself to write such a blog. Well here it goes.
Christmas is not really a holiday in Vietnam. There may be ornaments and signs, and children dressed up in little Santa Claus outfits, but it isn’t ‘important’ in the same sense. In fact, it wasn’t even a holiday. ILA was closed, but my dear friend Alex MacIntosh in Hanoi, was forced to attend work on said day. My regards to him.
In preparation for Christmas, ILA had some Christmas decorations put up, and had a Santa go around to the classes to distribute candies and milk. They nominated me (Brandon) as Santa. Now most of you know Santa, and many of you know me, so you can imagine how ill-fitted I felt. However, after stuffing a pillow in my jacket, and putting on a beard, I felt a little more suitable. It was quite fun to be Santa. I must say it was difficult to keep saying Ho Ho Ho and Merry Christmas for 5 minutes as I handed out the candy, but I managed. My own students were of course enthralled to discover that I was Santa. I denied it, but I can only defend so much when Santa happened to show up at the same time I had taken an hour break from class . Some classes were quite boring, but some classes had children jumping and singing for me. This was all caught on camera for VTV9. I did manage to see the footage of myself. I was good.

On that evening (Saturday), ILA hosted its Christmas pageant of sorts. You may recall me mentioning that we practice/teach the children Christmas songs. Those who were good enough were chosen to compete at the pageant for prizes. I had two classes involved, as did Adam. I showed up (decked out in shorts, which were mocked several times throughout the night) and was mauled by my youngest class. I was dragged to a seat amongst them, and used as a climbing gym for the next 30 minutes (which offered a great opportunity to meet the sisters of some of my students, who happened to be more my age). Many classes performed, and many were quite good. Others were quite terrible. As it wound up, my elite class (4 16 year old girls performed for the class) ended up with second prize, which is 1 million dong to go towards a party. We are yet to have it, but it should be fun. The TA’s and I were taken out to dinner and had a joyous occasion. I felt surprisingly comfortable among 14 Vietnamese natives. They are wonderful people, and make such a great attempt to make me feel welcome. We laughed and joked in both English and Vietnamese, mostly them laughing at me trying to speak their language.

Christmas eve was definitely the strangest on record por moi. I spent the majority of the day teaching English, and then went home to celebrate an evening that is usually spent with my family. I had no family, so I comforted myself with some local friends and beer. As beers turned into more beers, we headed to a disco. Probably one of the last places on earth I would have predicted myself to be on a Christmas Eve. However, it was quite fun. A good time was had by all.

We made it home by 3 am, perfect timing to catch the 6:30 am phone call from Adam’s parents. My dear friend Adam turns off his cell phone at night (which has caused me phone call grief before) and it took me a while to figure out who I was talking to. After crashing through my haze, and looking at the overseas phone number, I made the connection to go down and wake Adam, and tell him to turn on his phone. After another short snooze, I was awoken by my own parents. Again after throwing off the haze I was quite pleased to be talking to my parents on what is normally a special and family oriented occasion. I may have been a bit groggy, but it was a wonderful way to start Christmas day.

With all of us awake (our friend Megan was down from HCM), we decided to get the day started. So we went for breakfast, and then to the most important destination of our day….. the beach. It was a gorgeous day. The waves looked a little small for surfing, but turned out to be quite spectacular. They were slow moving waves, that weren’t breaking too fast, which made them easy to catch, and easy to ride, and they didn’t toss you around like a doll if you feel, which was good for our state. Of course our state wasn’t static, as we had acquired a cooler, and kept it stocked with beer and ice. We managed to spend a good 4 hours at the beach. It was a strange feeling, mostly because it wasn’t Christmas. Several times Adam and I mentioned that it was cool, but we needed snow and family to really have Christmas. After our day at the beach, we had a dinner party to attend. Of course we hadn’t prepared for it yet, and we were already 30 minutes late. But late in Vietnam doesn’t really exist, and purchasing food is not a problem. We thusly went to Antony and Craig and Jan’s, and continued the Merry Christmas by watching a beautiful sunset on their beautiful third floor balcony. The party raged on for several hours, and I need not give details, as they would be no different than any other party, other than the fact that we wished each other Merry Christmas every once and a while with huge smirks on our faces, as many of us felt the same dis-association.

So it was an uneventful Christmas as far as strange things didn’t happen. But when the whole day is strange, how do you call it uneventful???

To my family, I missed you too. I had a blast, but I still missed you. We now trudge on into the new year of 2007. I wish you all the best for the new year. Mine starts 12 hours before most of you, 13 for some, 14 for others, and 15 before the stragglers on the west coast. May your weather be cold, and your drinks too. (And good luck to Simon who wants to shoot some squirrels. Knock ‘em dead!)
Love ya.
Brandon.