Việt Nam Diaries Pt. 1 - Happy Birthday, Christ
I have several articles dating back to last year that I'm still working on editing, but my schedule has changed a lot and it is just taking me too long to finish even a single thing.
It occurred to me before that I wanted to have a different format for my stories going forward and decided that my second year here would be a good time to try this out. The style will be less well-edited, more stream-of-conscious, but allow me to give my readers a better sense of my actual day-to-day life.
I am striving to keep a better document of what occurs during most of my days and write down specific moments that are special to me in a diary format. Hopefully I can keep up with pictures as well, but if there are picture-less entries it's because it is one of the most time-consuming parts of publishing this newsletter.
Week 53 in the Village
Monday
It is the 81st Anniversary of Hồ Chí Minh establishing the Army of the People's Republic of Viet Nam and our school week started with a special presentation during the weekly Flag Ceremony. Two students sing the song from the 2025 film "Mưa Đỏ" ("Red Rain"), the biggest budget Vietnamese film of the year, about the sacrifices people made during the 'American War'. This song has been ubiquitous since the movie came out in August.
The boys sing incredibly well and the teachers look at each other and nod approval.
Then an army officer with rank bars on his green uniform stands and sings a traditional duet with a woman official in a pink áo dài. She makes graceful hand gestures, and after the first verse the pair do a graceful twirl in place and exchange places on stage.
The military official gives a speech which I try to get parts of on Google Translate by sitting next to one of the loudspeakers. He encourages the students to study hard no matter what field they are in, because a soldier's job doesn't have meaning if there's not a strong community at home.
The officials leave quickly after the ceremony is over, and I find it amusing to see the two older decorated military officers get on one motorbike together to leave.
The drum goes off 10 minutes early for lunch and you can hear surprised and excited cheers from all the classrooms. The principal and some of the teachers are going to lunch today, I suppose for the occasion although our guests have all gone.
As usual I am invited, which I am deeply grateful for. We have hotpot of chicken, chicken offal and beef. I have had dozens of hotpot meals over the course of the year, but this is a good one. There are handfuls of an herb that I haven't had before. It looks a bit like parsley and has a strong vegetal taste. I ask about it and it turns out to be mugwort.
I still can't follow most of the conversation but I can contribute a little if I lead the conversation. The badminton nets have been set up this week, and I ask one of the school's guards if he wants to play with me. He simply says no, and I have to chuckle and say "Ok".
Another guard explains to me: "He only plays volleyball."
"Well, do you want to play badminton with me?"
"Yes!" he says excitedly.
The principal had seen me cycle through a neighboring village and he invites me to play pickleball. I explain that I have never played but I want to. That village is famous for the craft of traditional Vietnamese musical instruments. So I also tell him that I am interested in learning more about them.
Two hours later I meet with my Vietnamese tutor online, a little tired. And a little drunk, which she finds amusing.
Tuesday
I have discovered that there are several Catholic cathedrals at the very limits of my range for an evening bicycle, so after classes I set out to find one so that I can see some Christmas decorations. It takes an hour and takes me into areas where people are not used to seeing a foreigner - lots of shocked staring - but I am rewarded with a very well-decorated church. An interesting collision of sacred and commercial symbols of Christmas.
Last year the only word for Christmas that I knew was Nô en, which is simply phonetic for the French Noël. This year I learned that the proper word is Giang sinh, and the proper greeting "Chúc mừng Giáng sinh!" 'Giáng' means descend and 'sinh' means birth, which describes the belief that Christ descended from heaven to be born on earth.
As soon as I arrive, I realize there are dark clouds moving in, so I immediately turn around and cycle flat out all the way home to not get rained on.
Wednesday - Christmas Eve
Class 10A1 doesn't let me come into their classroom when 1st period starts. They say "Come back, come back," in broken English. I'm confused. Ms. T arrives and laughs and tells me they are preparing something for me. We wait a full 5 minutes for the all-clear signal to come in.
The lights are off and one student has a Christmas cake at the front of the class; some of the candles are lit. They all sing the Happy Birthday song perfectly (it's common here), and then I blow out the candles. One of the star male students of this class comes up and very formally wishes me happy birthday and "success in the new year". Then Ms. T asks another student to speak. Her eyes grow wide for a second because I guess she wasn't planning on it but she gives another good (always very formal) wish in good English.
As the honoree, I am expected to make a speech of my own. And then I am expected to cut the cake and there are only 10 plates for 40 students. I cut the round cake into squares, and at first they look at me like I dumb, but then they realize I can stretch it into more pieces, which I put 2-3 to a plate.
The local bakers here are really good so birthday cakes are tastier than the average supermarket cake in America. The buttercream frosting has a hint of coconut cream in it, and a popular filling for the middle layer is blueberry.
The next class goes wild cheering when I walk in and start singing "Last Christmas" a capella, one of the most popular pop Christmas songs here.
One of the female students starts begging the teacher for something. She wants to sing the song properly, so the karaoke version is pulled up on Youtube in front of the class. The student comes to the front of the class in bare feet and kneels next to the teacher to read the lyrics off her laptop. She screams the song at the top of her lungs with no thought for the proper key; the teacher cringes away from the shrill voice and the whole class doubles in laughter. When it gets to a verse it gets quieter as she doesn't know the words, but as soon as the chorus comes back she's screaming again.
After this entertainment, the class never quite manages to focus on our English lesson.
In the hall, Chị H smiles at me and says something like "You got a gift, didn't you?" The day before, I got a gift basket of cured meats and cheese (sourced from Hà Nội) sent by my parents, and it became part of the morning's gossip. She is pleased to learn it's from my parents for Christmas.
As the afternoon turns to dinnertime, I begin to prepare this snacky charcuterie meal - salami, crackers, cheese, cookies - in the tradition of my family for Christmas Eve, and video phone them on Whatsapp when they awake in the US.
But at 4:30, Ms. L sends a message to the English teachers' chat in Zalo: "At 6:30, all English teachers and principals are asked to report to 'Chris' office' to celebrate Christmas."
For an hour, I'm fuming. I now need to spend the entire two hours cleaning. And I don't even have enough space to host that many people. I don't like them going into my kitchen/bedroom area. I would have liked to have been consulted.
But I decide to force all that down, because it is very nice that they have thought to do something for me.
Ms. L brings another Christmas/birthday cake and a very Vietnamese-style snacky spread: trays piled with fruit and individually-wrapped snack crackers (usually savory with a hint of sweetness; I miss plain salty crackers). One teacher brings the alcohol: in this case, a bottle of Vietnamese-made, fruit-derived (but still neutral-flavored) vodka. We chat and snack for over two hours.
My conversational Vietnamese runs out pretty quick, so I'm mostly just listening to them chat about school problems and understanding little of it. I decide my contribution is to play the Christmas music. But occasionally Ms. L interrupts the music by playing other Christmas songs on her phone loudly enough that I have to pause my music. I think she may not realize that I'm trying to give them an authentic atmosphere of our Christmas classics - Burl Ives, Nat King Cole - but she (understandably) only knows a few songs like "Jingle Bells".
Thursday - Christmas Day
More classes are allowed to have holiday parties with me. The first period has made cupcakes which is way more convenient. Only when I go to remove them from the tray, they are glued so firmly that I can't peel them off the board without partially smooshing them. I get red frosting all over my fingers.
In Ms. L's class, the kids sing Happy Birthday, but she makes them take the candles off the cake and hold them like it's Christmas Eve. As we sit and chat, she tells me that one of her sons believed in Santa Claus, but the other never did. She even mentions that Santa Claus should come down the chimney, which I find funny because houses don't have chimneys here.
In another class, a talented student sings "All I Want for Christmas is You" with a really lovely tenor voice. I'm thankful the students can't fully understand the lyrics of that song ("Santa Claus won't make me happy with a toy on Christmas day"?).
I decide to reward them with a karaoke song of my own, and sing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". Mr. L, who is fairly fluent in English, nods in approval and says: "Very interesting lyrics".
I found Dark Chocolate Swiss Miss hot chocolate mix at the import grocery store in Hà Nội a few weeks prior, so I cook up a thick helping of it with water (no milk), simmering it with cinnamon, cloves, and star anise. I share this with one of my classes, but it's hard to make anything last in such large classes and not all of the students get to taste it.
I also take Merci chocolates to the teachers in the breakroom. The candies are gone in less than a minute.
It's very confusing that my birthday celebrations have been so wrapped up with Christmas celebrations, but it's also true that they sometimes incorrectly abbreviate my name Christopher to Christ instead of Chris (with an unvoiced 't'), so it may be just as confusing to them...
Friday
In between classes, a 10th-grade girl beckons to me while I am waiting in the teacher's room. She bows and hands me a blue envelope with two hands. Before I can ask her what class she is in or her name, she is running away. When I opened it later, I was so moved; the assortment of candies, One Piece stickers, a keychain, and origami hearts made out of 1,000Đ bills is clearly just everything she could scrounge together to make a birthday gift.
Despite another teacher having a Christmas birthday and usually only going out for joint birthday lunches, this year the school arranges my own birthday lunch and we all pack into a van to go to the nearest city. They have heard that I like seafood and so this time we go to a seafood restaurant that has both hotpot and a table grill at each table. With hints of Korean cuisine, there is kimchi and savory ssamjang-style sauces on the table. I bring a bottle of western red wine, as does my principal, so everyone gets to start with that before the Vietnamese rice wine is broken out.
It was the best meal I've ever enjoyed with the school.
Saturday
After classes, Ms. L knocks on my door and behind her is a shy male student I recognize. The first week I was in this town, he came up to me in the market and spoke with me in English. It's very rudimentary, but he is sincerely trying which I can't say about a lot of students here.
Since then, I have learned that he loves anime and wants to be an artist. After he leaves, I open the package and find a portrait of me with my laptop bag slung over my shoulder as it always is at school.
With only one year left teaching here, I already feel time is running out, and I will be very sad to leave so many lovely people.
