Turning 60 in Hanoi.

Although my birthday was a few days ago, I delayed the posting because I was waiting for some pictures that some of my students took. Alas, I am still waiting so here is the post sans their pictures. Hopefully they will be posted at a later date.

One of the first things I do each morning is check email. Peter, of course, knows this, so he made sure that my 60^th birthday poem was waiting for me in my inbox. For those of you who may not know, Peter is a gifted poet. I have a binder full of poems that Peter has penned for me over the years and on my birthday morning, I added another one.

Next, I received B-day voicemails from my daughter, son and their families. They were trying to conference Skype to sing to me but Peter and I were having a sleep-in and missed their call. Still, it made my heart happy to hear all their voices singing.

I wanted to do some sightseeing ( still so much of Hanoi we haven’t seen), so we headed out to the Temple of Literature. This is the site of Hanoi's first university, founded in 1076.

Beautiful, tranquil grounds with lovely buildings.

Fanciful roof-lines.

Huge, old trees.

Monkeys.

And dragons (blue because Vietnam is the Land of the Blue Dragon).

And turtles (a symbol of scholarship and sagacity).

Oh, my!

Even birds with turtles.

Then we walked to the prison once known as the "Hanoi Hilton."

This was built by the French for political prisoners in the late 1800s, and held Communist rebels until the mid-fifties, so it is quite a shrine to the revolutionary struggle. Very little mention of the American prisoners who took their place. Most of the once-sprawling prison is gone; in its place is one of Hanoi's higher-end high-rises.

By this time our dogs were past merely barking, so we went home for a rest. We ventured forth in the cool of the evening, had a delightful meal at one of the best restaurants in Hanoi. A truly stellar meal. Easily the best we've had since coming here.

This, I thought, was a fine way to spend my birthday.

But wait, there was more to come.

When I arrived at school on Monday evening, I was greeted by my employers with a huge bouquet of white roses. When I walked into my first class, they presented me with gifts and red roses and sang Happy B-day to me. Apparently the tradition is then for the birthday person to sing a song back. My voice is for the shower only; so after making them all promise that laughter would be kept to a minimum, I bravely broke out in “Yesterday”. Fortunately for me they all started singing with me so my feeble voice was not really heard.

I have a 15 minute break before my next class. Usually the owner of the school will come into my class and chat with me between classes so I was not surprised to see him peek his head in the door. He informed me that my next class was waiting for me downstairs. As I started to leave the classroom he suggested that I take all my belongings with me as I would not be teaching my next class and would not be coming back upstairs. What? I asked; he said, sorry, I can’t tell you anymore than that.

So I gathered my flowers and gifts and as I walked down the stairs my next class broke out in applause and cheers. They also gave me flowers; this time beautiful long-stemmed yellow roses. One of my students explained that yellow roses are very special and are only given to parents and highly-esteemed teachers!

After opening a few more gifts, we all climbed onto motorbikes and I was taken out for a wonderful Vietnamese feast. It was quite the sight to see a line of motorbikes – most carrying bouquets of flowers so that, as I was told, all could see that this was a special occasion. Oh my, the food. The dishes just kept coming and as the honoree, I had to try everything first. A different dish would be served and I would be given a portion while everyone looked on.

Afterwards, some of my students insisted on bringing me home; so once again we all took to the streets on motorbikes, flowers in hand and headed to our home. I quickly called Peter to alert him that we would all be descending upon the house in just a few minutes. Everyone stayed for about an hour; I then went to bed and slept soundly.

Here's the group who took me to dinner.

A great birthday.

O.