Chào các anh các chį!

Happy Halloween!!!

Okay, so I just got back from a wonderful weekend in the Sapa area (Northern mountainous region of Vietnam). We got back this morning via train at 5:00a.m. So in a little bit, I will post plenty of pictures from my fun-filled travels, but for this post, I want to first tell you about my Halloween here. It may have been the most exciting Halloween of my life!

So, Vietnamese people do not know about Halloween, generally speaking. Today, after class Kristy and I go to the center to go shopping. We get some cute things, and then meet up with
Sean, Don, Thuy and Tan. So then Sean, Kristy and I go shopping again, and everything magically is like half off...Sean is an amazing bargainer...and then as we are going home....we're like: IT'S HALLOWEEN!

This is where the story gets good...

We stop at the drug store, and buy like 300 thousand in candy...and go home. I dress up as a Hmong person, and Sean dresses up as an American airman. Then we empty all the candy we bought into a laundary bucket...and start our journey through D8...doing REVERSE trick or treating. As we knocked on doors, we had a following. We went from floors 1-4 in D8 (our dorm) knocking on doors and giving out candy. By the time we were done distributing candy to our dorm, this was our group:

Sean and I---the candy buyers

Don (this is GREAT) ---costume: trench coat, Dark glasses, inspector gadget hat...he looked like a potential streaker. He also carried around his laptop, having made a page that was black with orange writing that said HAPPY HALLOWEEN with pumpkins all over it. And he had "Monster Mash" in his music collection, so he put that on repeat. It was GREAT!!!

Noah---A pirate, down to fake earings, striped shirt, cloth around head, and a toy parrot puppet.

Diane---Gypsie girl, with dark eyeliner and gypsie looking clothing

Kristy--- schoolgirl with pig-tails and a preppy sweater with a vest over it, pretending to read "A long history of Vietnam"...go Nguyen Khac Vien!

Thuy---wore a toga.

Eric---put on a peaceful looking shirt (the best way I could describe it), a fishing hat, and brought around his bamboo fishing pole that he bought a couple of weeks ago.

Okay, hopefully Noah will come give me the picture later, as he promised...(we took a group pic) and I can put it up. Remember, that all of our costumes were thrown together in a matter of minutes...it was so fun.

So it gets better....

After going through our dorm, we have plenty of candy left. The whole group of like the 15 of us obnoxious Americans decide to go reverse trick or treating at the Vietnamese dorm. We trek out into the darkness. We decide to knock on a random door on the way. Thuy has to spend like 2 minutes explaining to them what Halloween is...

then we continue to the Vietnamese dorm, and see many students along the way. We are a crazy bunch just screaming Happy Halloween and throwing candy at everyone. Vietnamese students who know about Halloween join our possee too, and head to the Vietnamese dorm with us too. Vietnamese dorms have specific visiting hours, and Mondays are not visiting days, so we had to bribe the gaurds with candy, and just sorta walk in knowing full well that we weren't allowed.

Vietnamese dorms are generally 10-12 per room, no TV, air conditioning, fridge, ect. So most of the doors were still open because curfew had not caught up with us yet. So we go from room to room shouting "Happy Halloween!" All of the Vietnamese students got such a kick out of it!!! We had the "Monster Mash" still playing, and we were just rowdy, and giving out candy. We kept saying "Trick or Treat!! Cho em keo (give me candy in the Tieng Viet)". We were just joking since it was REVERSE trick or treating, after all. But people still laughingly scrambled to give us grapefruits and such.

When we ran out of candy we started our trek home, having a great time still. I said "enough of this monster mash! If you don't have 'Thriller' than we will just have to sing it ourselves!" Within a minute, we were all singing thriller, and doing the dance in the middle of the street. It was HILARIOUS!

We got back to D8 and took pictures (i didn't have my camera with me) ...and about 45 minutes had gone by since we started the fun night. And I was no longer a Hmong woman. I was a smirf. I had gone from being a Hmong woman to a smirf on accident. The Hmong blanket and bandana that I bought in Lao Cai province this weekend stained me. Whats the word?...um well the dye just leaked all over me. It was pretty funny. I'm still stained, after a long shower. But this is actually a good thing. It means that the cloths are actually made fully by Hmong people, not factory made. Authentic, you know? During our 7 hour hike to the village we stayed in this weekend, I saw numerous villagers along the way with blue hands, just permanently blue or purple hands, from the years of dyeing clothing..okay different story there though. Nonetheless, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

posted by Steffanie @ 8:54 AM