A Christmas Eve Whirlwind

I woke up on Friday morning wondering how the Christmas weekend would turn out. Our school threw a Christmas party after giving students their grades back. For some this meant "Hey, you failed but Merry Christmas!" Giving a student a bad grade is hard, failing them is heart wrenching but failing them on Christmas!!?? It couldn't be more painful if it was physical torture. Most of the failed students did take the news fairly cheerfully and we moved onto gift exchange and a Christmas buffet. A few of my students gave me gifts including a leopard print shirt with frilly sleeves (uh...thanks...) and my favorite gift, two tiger fish and a fishbowl. (read the separate post to find the fate of my fish.)

Our friend, The came over on Christmas Eve and asked whether we were going downtown to look at the lights. We told him we'd go on Christmas. "But it is Christmas!" The exclaimed. Say wha? Apparently the Vietnamese believe that the 24th is Christmas and that it ends at midnight... Possibly something to do with uneven numbers being unlucky? So we trooped downtown (or should I say fought our way) through the hordes of people. Ho Chi Minh City is rumored to have about 10 million residents and I strongly believe that about 7 million of them were in the Dong Khoi area on Friday night.

What a spectacle! The whole area was decorated with fairy lights and tinsel... dancers and singers and bands were competing to see who could make the biggest noise and attract the most attention. Street vendors were selling confetti by the bag to reckless Christmas-ers such as ourselves who sprinkled the surrounding crowds with their wares. Of course, our trio of white skins attracted more attention than most and we found ourselves to be direct targets of the confetti sprinklers. All this was done with humor and cheer but, when we found ourselves surrounded by a crowd of fifteen boys who began to pelt us with confetti, rub it into our hair and add a sprinkle of shaving cream for effect, things began to get a little out of control. Craig was choking on the confetti, I had it in my nose and eyes and Carrie had it everywhere from her ears to her underwear!! It took us a while but we finally managed to escape the reckless crowds and seat ourselves in the park where little children practiced their Merry Christmas and there was little room for confetti throwers to move around.