Mid-autumn festival and banana party

A sampling of the bananas from Sunday's party. 

One of the many moon cakes I've tried over the past weeks. 

Even with the weekend off from classes, we still managed to have two full days planned. Saturday and Sunday marked the annual celebration of the mid-autumn festival. Based upon the lunar calendar, preparations for the holiday begin weeks ahead when moon cake stands are set up all across the country. Marked by bright red and yellow striped awnings, the moon cake stands sell a variety of sweet cakes with the most popular being the classic moon cake. The cakes are just big enough to be held in your palm. I’m not quite sure what they’re made off, but have a bunch of different fillings. There’s one with chopped fruit and meat and another has the consistency of almost a solid jelly and came in a bunch of different flavors (my personal favorite was lotus). If my description hasn’t turned you off to these cakes yet, let me just add that each cake has at least one whole egg yolk in it (some cakes contain up to four!). Even with the egg the cakes are very sweet. With there being so many moon cake stands in HCM and Can Tho I was expecting a lot more tradition and activities to surround the holiday. I was kind of disappointed because although the streets were noticeably more busy on Saturday and Sunday, not much was done to celebrate. Probably the most public display (besides the selling of moon cakes) was seeing some children walking around the city with lanterns. As custom goes, many of the children take boats out onto the river and float the lit lanterns.

We did get to do a little bit of celebrating on Sunday when we visited a home for children in Can Tho. The home takes in orphaned children with ages as young as five or six and as old as 17. There are currently about 45 children staying in the home. From the second we stepped in the room with the children the children were all smiles, shouting hello and coming up and grabbing our hands, wanting us to sit next to them so they could hold our arm, our hand or anything just to make physical contact. Such displays of affection and open desire for physical contact were a welcome surprise in a cultural where physical contact is often seen as taboo, especially toward foreigners. While we were there, a group of Vietnamese students studying to be doctors led a series of games some of which were just for fine while others were meant to be important lessons in hygiene (i.e. brushing your teeth correctly). The language barrier was so evident in this situation, yet didn’t really take away from our visit. The Vietnamese students did some translating and the children knew some English as well, however much translation wasn’t needed as the children were happy to show you how to play games and were eager just to include you in their afternoon celebration. Finding how to communicate without conversation was challenging and a good number of the children laughed as we attempted to use our new skills in vietnamese. This was really the first opportunity we’ve had to interact with the local population (minus the couple of professors and English major students) and made me really excited for our first excursions this week.

Earlier that day we went to our program assistant Tien’s home for a banana party! Unlike in the U.S., Vietnam has 10 varieties of bananas. We only had six different kinds at our party, but that was plenty! Besides having them raw, there was a dish of grilled bananas, bananas wrapped in rice and fried, bananas cut up, put in a coconut sauce and topped with peanuts and a bowl of bananas with three different types of sweet potatoes in a coconut sauce. Probably though my favorite dish was the one of bananas that turned a bright plum when cooked and were wrapped in rice. Between all those dishes and trying the bananas raw (there’s one that is peeled and slice like a carrot!) I had more than my fill of potassium for the day.

As we tasted all the bananas, we also had the opportunity to talk with Tien’s mom who is an English professor at CTU about the country’s education system at the university level. Without going into too much detail, our conversation included a discussion on how the Vietnamese tradition of protecting face affects classroom environments and in turn prevents Vietnam’s university system from adopting more western practices. At Vassar students and professors are very involved in how the College runs and what goes on in the classrooms. When there is dislike, the administration knows and solutions for change are put forward. Obviously in Vietnam a desire for change doesn’t happen quickly, if at all. While I had known about these differences between the U.S. and Vietnam, having such an open conversation about the two cultures really brought about a much better understanding of issues in both countries.

I finally was able to get up a small album of photos. More to come!