Christmas Time

I had the 24th and 25th off, as most schools are closed and everyone wants to celebrate Christmas. So, I celebrated on both days! Even though I was away from home I had some great people to celebrate with. In Vietnamese, the word for "celebrate" is "an", the same as the word for "eat". If you say that you want to celebrate Christmas, it sounds like you want to eat Christmas. I think it just emphasizes how important eating is on a holiday, in every culture.

On the 24th, our maid prepared a lot of food and my roommate Le invited some friends over to eat, listen to Christmas music, and gift swap. We had a shrimp and noodle and veggie mix that was actually served cold and tasted great. Then there was a beef stew with potatoes and carrots, just like back home. His friends brought over desserts like cake. AND I couldn't buy eggnog so I made it myself using a recipe online. It came out alright, didn't taste as good as regular eggnog and the eggs kept wanting to separate, but at least the guests got a general idea of what eggnog tastes like. Rather than go on and on talking, I'll just show some pictures.

Here's a picture of our group:



And my parents sent me a nice package from home with some candy and toys and an elf hat that I bought last year, so I posed in front of my freshly-decorated tree:



The next day, the 25th, Uyen and I went out to take pictures of the decorations around the city. There was a nice wintery theme outside of Diamond, the one big department store in Vietnam, although it didn't have the same effect when I'm wearing shorts and a T-shirt next to supposedly icy trees. Also, the big Notre Dame Cathedral was all lit up with people coming to the church services that night. Lots of people were out and about taking in the sights, although it did start raining. Perhaps I spoke too soon about the dry season, because it's been raining every day again. We got pretty wet, didn't have jackets, and now I'm feeling sick, but slowly recovering now. Oh, also, before we went looking at decorations that night, we stopped to eat sticky rice and chicken at a local Vietnamese place. Uyen got more exotic fare and had my try one of her pieces of meat. After I bit into something very rough and chewy, she told me that it was pig's tongue. That in itself didn't turn me off, but I just didn't like the taste that much. I didn't have my camera at the time to snap a photo, but here are some other pictures.





More pictures can be found here: http://s334.photobucket.com/albums/m418/PetroSmith/Life%20in%20Vietnam/Christmas%20in%20Vietnam/
Some other Vietnam picture can be found here: http://s334.photobucket.com/albums/m418/PetroSmith/Life%20in%20Vietnam/

Merry Christmas and happy new year everyone!