Merry Christmas to everyone!

If you believe it or not but I have a really "christmassy" feeling this year!

A three meters high beautiful decorated Christmas Tree is standing in ELI's Entrance Hall and adored by myself every day when I come in the door :)

Even if we have no freezing weather and no snow, but I really enjoy the Christmas Time here in Vietnam. All coffee places are playing English Christmas songs. The streets are decorated beautifully with sparkling lights in silver, green and red! And the best thing is I don't freeze ;) I can still wear T-Shirts or gorgeous dresses for our Xmas parties! Can life be better?!

We had two really nice Xmas parties at work. One for the students where they had prepared A0 Xmas Cards beforehand and some classes had practiced different performances incl. dancing and singing with self created lyrics to their favourite Xmas songs.

We had such a brilliant time in preparing for the great event, which took place last Friday on the 17th of December. You should have seen the students, they had worked with so much joy and energy on it, it was inspiring as a teacher as well.

Two of my classes participated in each of the competitions: Xmas Card + Xmas Performance

So I was as excited as them to see if we have a chance of winning a lovely price.

The party started with a performance of the ELI staff with the famous songs "12 days of Xmas" where we had created our own lyrics to make it more fun and more Vietnamese.

We had a really good time in all our rehearsals ;) We all made an effort to even dress up, so I actually was a butterfly ;) Don't even ask how often we actually met! But in the end it all worked out and we got some tremendous applause!!! The students loved it and that was all what mattered.

Then the students started off with their performances and Xmas songs with their own lyrics. The eagerness rose by each single performance that evening.

One of my classes dressed even in Santa Claus costumes and one girl dressed up in a stunning white dress as an Angel and sang with a gorgeous voice "Last Christmas"!

TOEIC Class: Winner of the best Xmas Song & Dance performance 2010

Our rehearsal

All the Xmas Cards were displayed in the Entrance hall and the judges had to vote for the best one!

By the end of the evening the winners were announced and if you believe it or not but both of my classes won the first prize!!!!

I felt so happy for my students and you should have seen their eyes and faces. I was so proud of them and still are. They got some vouchers for the Cinema and the other class a voucher to go for coffee :) The students were stunned!

EFIC - Elementary Class:

Winner of the best and prettiest Xmas Card 2010 and 3rd place for the performance!

Our rehearsal

The 2nd party was for the ELI staff yesterday where we went for a really posh dinner buffet in our famous 5 Star Hotel in Danang!!! Was that tasty :) Pity I couldn't try and eat everything - the selection was just too big. A dessert table...you can only dream of!

Please also have a look on our ELI website, where you can actually see the rehearsals before the party :) It was so much fun! On the top of each video you can see the name of the teacher.

http://my.opera.com/elidanang/blog/elidanang-christmas-party-performance-2

I hope you are all having such a nice Xmas feeling as myself. I am far away from home this year once again but I hope you all have a chance to celebrate Xmas with you family and loved one's. Thank God I have skype and so we will have a small little Xmas party with our video cameras and it will almost feel like being back home.

My house is also not empty as I am getting a visitor over. Marie from Dublin is coming to stop by over Xmas during her Leave of Absence trip from IBM Ireland ;) Looking forward to welcome another guest soon.

I will teach on the 24th and also on New Years Eve, but there is still enough time to celebrate!!!

Merry Christmas to all of you :)

Big hug

Help for flood victims in Quang Binh

Lien, a student of mine asked me if I wanted to join the Danang Tourist Office to visit Quang Binh province to help recent flood victims in Dong Hoi from the 13-14.11.2010. I accepted :)

So Saturday morning, 5.25am the alarm clock went off! We met at 6am at the Da Nang Tourist Office to visit a remote region in Quang Binh province.

We were 24 people, all of them Vietnamese except myself. Most of them were from Da Nang, however we also had three women who are working in Saigon for PLTCO.

Different Tourist organisations had collected money and clothes for the recent flood victims in the Quang Binh Province. We drove for six to eight hours on Saturday until we arrived at the Quangh Binh Government office, where we unloaded over 1000kg of rice and a lot of clothes.

When we arrived, we could already see a lot of people eagerly waiting to get some donations e.g. like a bag of rice or clothes.

Most of our group stayed there and gave out the bags of rice to the poor people.

Around ten people including myself drove further to an even more remote village. During our journey we had to get off the bus to built a bridge with gravel as the street had collapsed through the recent flooding in that region.

I can tell you Vietnamese people are very practical and after 10 people were throwing stones into the big whole, we were able to cross the bridge, which lead us to our village.

People were already waiting for us!

A lot of women and children were keen to see what we brought with us. So we unloaded almost 500kg of rice, clothes and some sweets for the children. You should have seen the eyes of all the people in the village. They were so grateful. No words were needed to see these feelings.

One of the oldest women in the village opened her envelope next to a tree. She saw the 200.000VND and she had tears in her eyes. She came over to me and shock my hand and spoke some Vietnamese to me. Translated it meant that she was so grateful and she appreciated and thanked us all. It is so toughing to see how a person can appreciate this amount of money so much (200.000VND = US$10).

Another women unpacked her bag of clothes and she found a small little doll in there. I will not forget this pictures, when she was running around with her doll full of happiness!!!

After all these impressions we drove to Dong Hoi, which is a small city along the coast in Central Vietnam where we stayed overnight.

We had a lovely Vietnamese dinner in our hotel, sang and danced until we fell in our beds ;)

The next morning we got up at 5.40am again! 6am breakfast and at 7 we left to do some sightseeing.

We started off with a visit to the nearby impressive Sand Dunes. It felt like I was in Africa, Morocco or Egypt ;) So cool!

We continued to drive even further into the countryside close to the Laos Boarder. We visited some houses for "Home stays" and walked through a National Park. Unfortunately through the recent severe flooding the bridge was destroyed so we were unable to visit the famous cave. Another time I guess.

We visited an open-air war museum, stopped for lunch when we returned to Dong Hoi and after no rain for almost 36 hours it started to pour down! Thank god we were on the bus...We had a very long journey back to Danang in front of us. We played cards and stopped in between at a local market to have a break and do some shopping. The roads were treacherous through all the flooding in the recent weeks, so it took us ages to come back to Danang. However we had so much fun and it was such a good feeling to be able to help some of the flood victims in this region.

Imagine how you would feel if your house would be flooded two meters in height?! I really don't want to experience it. These people have a tough life and some cannot even try to escape it or change it to provide a better future for their children. There is still a lot which needs to be done in Vietnam!

I am so grateful that Lien gave me that opportunity to travel with all these funny and helpful Vietnamese people to learn even more about Vietnamese Culture and life in the poorer provinces.

Hope you are all well back home and hope to hear from you soon!

Hug

Kerstin

Danang - Hoi An - Hai Van Pass – Hue - Son Tra Mountain - Saying Goodbye

Arriving in Danang, after our great hiking trip felt good!

We could unpack all our staff and we started to get the washing machine going :-)

John offered himself to get all our hiking boats cleaned, which was a nasty job! Thanks John, I really appreciated this!

In the afternoon we decided to get some motorbikes for rent for John, Jan & Annette. We walked along the My Khe beach promenade down to Tam’s Motorbike rental. We got two motorbikes for Jan & John! That was a start :-)

In the evening we met Tony for dinner in the Red Sky Bar and we managed to rent another bike for Annette from “Bread of Life”. Annette got an almost brand-new bike, which had a lot of power – it suited her very well!

Next morning we went for a traditional Pho for breakfast with Vu with a lovely coffee afterwards in our my favourite place :-)

Before we were heading off to Hoi An, I had to go quickly to the Vietcombank to pick up my ATM Card. Yes, I finally got a Vietnamese bank account ;-) And if you believe it or not but they have online-banking in English!

At midday we finally got on our way to Hoi An with four motorbikes. It was the test-drive for our long trip to Hue the next day.

Arriving in Hoi An, we had a stroll through the ancient town before we went for lunch.

Vu and myself went for a shopping stroll with Annette to get some dresses for her. John & Jan went for a massage. In the late afternoon we all got back to Danang. On the way it started to rain, so the first experience with raincoats on the motorbikes for my visitors. But no problem at all ;)

Thursday morning we all started the day with a good breakfast at “Bread of Life” before we drove to Hue. Vu decided to come with us in the last minute ;-) He was more than welcome.

Unfortunately it was a little bit hazy but it got better on the way. We drove up the Hai Van Pass and it seemed like everybody was enjoying it quiet a lot.

We took some great pictures and stopped on the top for a quick break.

Driving down the Pass and riding through Long Co went all smooth. Then all the trucks were back on the road, which drove through the tunnel beforehand.

We had to drive over two more passes which was sometimes a bit tricky as some trucks broke down and people repaired them directly on the road. But we all managed it fine and after around 3 ½ hours we reached Hue :)

The last time I was in Hue was with Nina in 2005 and I hardly could remember anything. There were a lot of new buildings and the only things I could remember was the big bridge and the Citadel. Even the food market where Nina and myself strolled through five years ago had moved ;) Oh well, life goes on…interesting to see changes as well.

We drove to our hotel first of all, parked the motorbikes and walked into town. Starving by then we set down for lunch. With new energy, we walked towards the Citadel and bought some entrance tickets – interesting experience there, as foreigners have to get their tickets at a different entrance then Vietnamese and the price is higher (which I do understand). Vu had to get his ticket first and then we went to the other entrance where we all got in ;-)

I like to walk through the Citadel. It is a very quiet place with a lot of history and we had lovely sunshine, which toped it all. I still remember in 2005 it was pouring with rain! We were so lucky once again.

We could still feel our sore legs from our Fansipan Hike with each step, but in the end we didn’t care ;)

What another brilliant afternoon it was!

John, Annette & Jan took a coffee break and I drove with Vu back to the bus station. We drove through bustling Hue’s traffic until we found the right bus back to Danang for Vu.

I drove back to the hotel and got a “Xeom” to the place where Annette, Jan & John had a coffee in-between. In the meanwhile John had met another guy, who offered him to drive us around the next day to some tombs and places outside Hue for two hours. We took his opportunity and arranged that he should meet us at 9am at our hotel.

We strolled through the streets of Hue when we met a Vietnamese English teacher in front of the supermarket, who persuaded us to have some dinner with him and his family in a nearby restaurant.

It was a lovely evening; interesting never the less even though we had the most expensive dinner since we travelled in Vietnam!!!

On our way back to the hotel we stopped by the DMZ Bar, where we had some great “Baby Guinness” :) Another amazing day in Vietnam!

After breakfast we were ready to drive around Hue. Our motorbike driver picked us up and we drove to different tombs, to the famous ancient bridge and through some stunning landscape. All this once again on our motorbikes! This was just great!

At around noon we were heading back to Danang. We had some rain along the way when we were crossing one pass. It was pouring down, but we decided to keep going until Long Co to have some lunch there.

We found a restaurant by the beach with a nice view and took a rest. And the best part was still to come ;)

Well-fed we drove up the Hai Van Pass and we loved to lay us into the curves with our motorbikes :-) We had so much fun and it was an awesome feeling!

Back in Danang, we decided to go for a swim down to the beach. So great to swim again – I just love the sea!!

As Friday night was our last evening together, we decided to go for food with Mai & Tony and then head to the Seventeen Saloon, where they always play life music. We met Trang (a friend of mine) there and Vu was coming later on as well. We had a brilliant night and a lot of cocktails ;) This time we were not driving with our motorbikes, we decided beforehand to take cabs. What a night and the last one went to bed at 4am.

Saturday morning we all slept pretty long ;) Not really surprising after that night! As we all needed to recover we decided to go down to the beach for a swim and some relaxation. Then we made our way to Hoi An, where we had a lovely late Western lunch; Burgers & Baguettes! We picked up Annette’s dresses, which turned out really well :-) As Annette still had to pack, she and John were heading back to Danang whereas Jan and myself drove to An Dang beach in Hoi An.

This was the highlight of the day for sure! We had Mega waves and we had so much fun jumping into them ;) Back in Danang we all got ready to drive Annette to the airport. She was flying to Hanoi to go a trip to Halong Bay before she was going back to London.

First one gone :(

Jan, John and myself went for dinner and decided to go home after that. We had a lovely chat before we were heading to bed for another exciting day!

Weather was still great – a bit foggy, but the sun was on the way to break through, when we were driving up “Son Tra Mountain”. The mountain is also called monkey mountain as there are approximately 150 monkeys still living up there.

We had great fun to drive up there – the nature up on the top of the mountain is very special and it is just so peaceful. It doesn’t matter how often I drive up there, but I enjoy it every time! We stopped a few times in between to take some pictures and hoping to see some monkeys. Unfortunately we weren’t lucky this time!

At a stop on the top we even met some ex students of mine from DTU ;) Pretty funny – Danang is a small world.

Back on the beach road we decided to stop for some lovely lunch at the “U2” Restaurant with sea view. Tasty as usual, we had some beef skewers and “yellow” rice. Mmhh…so good!

We had another relaxing time on the beach and a swim before we had to return the motorbikes from John & Jan.

Back home the packing started, the last pictures were swapped from laptops to memory keys and we had a last beer together.

We picked a cab on the main road close to my house and drove to the airport. What a sad moment…!

The bags were checked in and we waited outside for Vu, who was picking me up from the airport to bring me back home.

Now it was time to say goodbye – once again! It was at least as bad as the first time back in Hanoi a year ago! Why is saying goodbye always so heartbreaking?!

On the back of Vu’s motorbike tears were running down my cheeks and I was glad I was not by myself.

Seems to me that since I am living even further away from home it is even harder to say goodbye to visitors. Guess it is, as you cannot just get quickly on a plane as you actually can in Europe, fly two hours and meet your friends.

Half an hour later my mobile was ringing and John was on the phone :-) “Our plane is delayed for two hours – we will go back to the Sky Bar having some dinner” – I almost couldn’t believe it and was speechless.

It was good that we were able to have another dinner together. It helped me a little bit to come down.

Thank you Annette, Jan & John for coming over to Vietnam to visit me! What a vacation we had and how much fun ;-)

Memories, nobody can ever take away from us!!!