This weekend was the AGU Halloween Extravaganza, among other interesting activities. The weekend began for me on Friday afternoon, when I had coffee with a woman who works at the library and is currently enrolled in my pre-academic training class. I include this in my interesting weekend story because it is so rare that I meet people here with whom I really connect in terms of dreams and world view. This woman, a few years older than me, is responsible for the university’s electronic news, and has written for various magazines and newspapers in Vietnam. She began doing radio shows when she was 12 years old, and comes from central Vietnam. She told me stories of growing up, of her reasons for coming to An Giang, of her interest in oral history and stories, and of her own war-torn family. We talked at length about interviewing the elderly in Long Xuyen as a way of preserving some collective memory from the wars. There are still so many stories that have yet to be told. When we left it had poured for at least an hour and we rode our bicycles back to the university through two-foot-deep puddles laughing the whole way.
Saturday was the Halloween party for my pre-academic students, all 30 of them, which meant that Jenna and the students and Kirsty and Michelle and I were busy preparing homemade spaghetti, pizza, salad, and caramel apples all day. It was a lot of fun to have so many people in the kitchen cooking all morning. We took a short break in the afternoon, and I took the opportunity to catch a short nap. However, my rest was shortly interrupted by a horrific crash from the hallway, and I rushed out to see what had happened. I gasped when I saw the glass door to the kitchen shattered into pieces all over the kitchen floor, and looked around to see Co Ut, the woman who cleans the house, walking away holding her knee. We went into her room and she was saying “khong sao, khong sao,” (“no problem”) but we quickly realized that she was holding closed a giant gash across her knee. We quickly called the housekeeper and one of the fellows to come with motorbikes to the house and take her to the hospital, her refusing the whole time. She didn’t want to go to the doctor because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to pay for it. Thankfully, she was convinced to let the rest of us pay, and I sat outside with the others while she got her knee stitched up.
Despite the afternoon trauma, the party was a lot of fun. We ate our “traditional” american food, had a costume contest, carved pumpkins, and took lots of pictures. We also played an interesting game wherein marshmallows are tied to a rope and three people compete to eat the most marshmallows first. The rope is held above the people’s heads. This resulted in ridiculous faces and body contortions and sent the whole room in an uproar of laughter.
Sunday morning I awoke early and went to the faculty football game. The male teachers of AGU were playing against the male employees of My Xuyen bank, who just happen to be one of my night classes. It was still muddy from the rain, and we stood in the hot sun in puddles of muck for an hour watching these guys get absolutely covered in grime. However, AGU won (woohoo!) so I guess it was worth going. And the afterparty was definitely worth going to. We went to eat “lau trau,” water buffalo hot-pot. For those who don’t know, hot-pot is a traditional southern dish which consists of a savory broth brought to boil at the table. You then put in raw meat, all parts of the animal in this case, vegetables, noodles, and eggs (whole, so they become hard-boiled). There are many different kinds of hot-pot, but this was my first time to try buffalo hot-pot. Hot-pot is usually accompanied with plenty of rice wine, in this case “ruou chuoi,” banana seed wine. The foul brown liquid comes to the table in reused water bottles. The table that morning (yes, it was about 9:30 am!) was segregated as usual: men on one side, women on the others. Usually this allows the men to get piss-drunk and the women to stay out of it. Not this Sunday. It was the first time ever I’ve seen every Vietnamese woman at the table drinking, and drinking rice wine at that! The My Xuyen bank students, of course, all had to cheers me, as did my friends from the university. Even though I was a “proper woman” and only wet my lips with the alcohol each time, not even taking half of the shots of stuff, I was still pretty buzzed by 11 am when we headed home. Crazy.
The last activity of the day was the AGU student Halloween party. We got there at 3 pm to set up the haunted house with the students, which had a real skeleton, complete with conical hat, and a moving noose that tried to catch passersby. The haunted house was the hit of the night. It kind of deteriorated into chaos from there, starting with bobbing for apples, then a fear factor eating contest and a dance contest. The night ended with the song “Thriller” blasting from the PA system and the students dancing around in a large circle (more of a running than dancing circle). Madness. I arrived home at 9:30 pm and collapsed. This morning I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a ton of bricks, wishing for only one more day of weekend.
