A Hue Halloween
on Sarah Easter (Vietnam), 01/Nov/2010 12:05, 34 days ago
I love eating candy, dressing up and getting scared, so naturally I also love Halloween. Even though people here don't actually celebrate Halloween as a part of the Vietnamese culture, the other volunteer at the Hope Center (Taru from Finland) and I decided to throw the staff and artisans at the Center a Halloween party. This basically involved us bringing lots of candy and the two of us running around in Halloween costumes (myself as a Vietnamese girl in the traditional dress -- how appropriate! and Taru as a male painter) while they laughed and smiled at us.After awhile though, the Hope Center really did get into the spirit of dressing up for Halloween which involved Taru painting beards and eyebrows on several of the children (to match her own face make up) and the artisans trying on the wigs and clothes at the Center. Taru's partner and son also arrived later on dressed up as girls, which was quite hilarious!On Halloween night, one of my other fellow volunteer friends (Hy) put on a haunted house with the children at one of the local shelters. HY and the other children at the shelter really put a lot of time and energy into creating an authentic haunted house and it was really quite well done. One of the rooms inside the house even featured The Ring complete with a fuzzy television set and girls popping out as the creepy girl from the movie (and they looked so much like the actual girl from the movie which made it even creepier!).Even though I missed not being able to celebrate Halloween in the US, I still had a really good holiday here in Vietnam.