Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Halloween Night

We got invited to participate in Bach Khoa University, Parable English Club's Halloween Night session. I was quite surprised to know that Halloween is quite widely celebrated in Vietnam~~, even though it is very much a western cultural celebration.

The experience was great, the place was well decorated, with some students also dressed up for the occasion. It began with a discussion on whether we believed in ghosts, and from this discussion I noticed that a majority of the Vietnamese students do believe, not so much in ghosts, but in spirits, something very related to certain aspects of their culture, such as anchesteral worship, something very close to Chinese religious culture. Also, they also celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival, thus, having very close links to Chinese culture..

This was followed by the telling of a ghost story in Vietnamese. Apparently, although I didn't understand it, but judging from the faces of the students, I think it wasn't that scary. I decided to be brave after that and went up to tell my own ghost story, but yea, its either they didn't understand my Singaporean English, or it wasn't scary, maybe because of the cultural context of the story as well, which was more Singaporean. Anyway it was a joke told in a scary way.

After that we had a competition to paint faces, and I so happened to be the model for one of the students to see who could paint the scariest face. Overall it was a fun experience and I got to learn about the hybridization in Vietnamese culture, and the foreign cultures that they do embrace, such as Halloween

Cheers

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