St. Joseph's Cathedral in Hanoi

(From June 21 email)

Hello Family,



Hope you are doing well. The list of people who get this email keeps growing, and if I have left anyone off please accept my apologies... also realize that the internet connections are slow and many times I am unable to add people to my address book (hence the list) without getting kicked off the internet and losing the messages I have written. I guess those are minor frustrations when we are so far away from a good, solid DSL connection. Many of you have sent me new email addresses, and I just hope that I have the correct address added. If not, please forward...



We have been having a couple of really wonderful days in Hanoi (which is a very pleasant change from some of the frustrating days at the beginning of our trip). Tom's meetings have been very successful and tomorrow (Monday) he will meet with the associate dean of the School of Public Health and a few folks in town from Tulane University. While Tom was at his first meeting I visited the Women's Museum, a history of Vietnamese women during the resistance against the French and the American "puppets."



Friday we went to the National History Museum, and yesterday we visited the Revolutionary Museum. The history of Vietnam is very interesting and the building was the first to combine French and Chinese architecture. There were fantastic paintings of battles against the Chinese in 938 and again in the 1200s. One of the most impressive things for me were the archaelogical finds. Immediately after the "war against the Americans" there were many discoveries - one of which were human teeth that were over 100,000 years old. I can only imagine how much was destroyed during the war... but that's an entirely different story. The revolutions against the French and Americans were the highlights of the other museum, but left us with more questions than answers at the present moment. Today we plan to visit the Ho Chi Minh Museum and hope to have some more clarity... we shall see.



One of the highlights of our visit happened this morning. We attended mass at St. Joseph's Cathedral. The church is beautiful, but it was very hot and the pews very small. The kneelers were just wooden planks - and I think that I still have red marks on my knees from kneeling, but the entire experience was very interesting. The entire mass was sung - and loosely reminded me of attending a mass in Latin. The place was packed - I am terrible at estimating how many people attend something - but I would guess that there were between 100-200 Vietnamese people there. "Amen" and "Allelluah" are the same - and that's about it. During the "Peace be with you" ceremony people bowed to one another. It was a very interesting mixture of Asian tradition with a very normal Catholic mass. There were readers, the gospel, the sign of the cross, communion, a choir and an organ! Definitely worth the sweat dripping down our backs for an hour in church. It was lovely.



One of the great things about Vietnam is the script. Between 1550 and 1600 a French missionary decided to transcribe the language into the Roman alphabet - which makes reading maps and street signs a breeze. So different from any other Asian country, which use symbols and/or Chinese characters. It is very nice to recognize words and be able to decipher the different letters and vowels. Despite the problems we've had - this is one thing that we have truly appreciated since we arrived.



Another wonderful thing about the country is the literacy rate. It seems like there are about 6 daily newspapers and everywhere we walk people are reading! This doesn't happen in many places, and as an educator I noticed this right away.



Last night we finally found a place that sells delicious Vietnamese beef noodle soup (Pho Tai) in the same style we can get in New Orleans. At last - things are starting to fall into place and make sense. Some Western meals are cheaper than Vietnamese - which is disappointing because we are on a fixed budget and want to eat many local things.



We leave on Wednesday for Bangkok and Thursday we head to Cambodia.



More soon...



Love,

Stephanie and Tom