Pagoda-hopping

As promised, some photos and narration of my day pagoda-hopping with the girls from K2B English!

They organized this field trip completely by themselves out of the kindness of their hearts (and their wallets), in order to spend more time with me and show me around Vietnam. While the trip itself was exhausting and frustrating at times (I'm used to being in "teacher role" for only 3 hours at a time and then retreating to my room for a nap and some American TV- therefore, 12 straight hours with the girls was a lot to handle), I am so happy I went with them, and so happy I was able to channel my educational history of McCarthy Towne Elementary School, Lawrence Academy, and Pitzer College for some out-of-classroom experiential learning. Plus, it was so wonderful to get to know these lovely students in a less formal context, and for them to see me in a more casual, non-teacher context.

Our day began at 7 AM (and by that, I mean about 7:45 when everybody FINALLY showed up, which I should have expected and compensated for by allowing myself an extra 45 minutes to sleep), and the girls had borrowed 7 motorbikes. When I saw one of them come to a screeching halt in front of the gates, I silently promised myself I would NOT be riding on the back of hers.) 

Luong-Man, this was supposed to be a candid shot! Do not look at the camera, and focus on driving- PLEASE!)

Our gang of motorbike babes

Finally we arrived at the base of Huong Mountain. When I was invited on this trip, I will admit that I was told that it was to a pagoda on top of a mountain, but I did NOT anticipate such an intrepid journey.

But the scenery was breath-taking on the climb up the slightly-inclined paved road.

Linh and Nguyet

There were spider-webs EVERYWHERE. Here is Anh-Nguyet modeling behind one.

And Luong-Man carrying our lunch, which consisted mostly of bread after four hours of climbing.

Blog-followers who have been loyal since my Senegal days, can you tell me if this is a sheep or a goat?

We stopped at every single shrine and miniature pagoda on the way up the mountain to light incense and to pray. Each time, my students offered me several sticks of incense and invited me to come pray with them, but by the end of the day, my head was hurting from the scent of incense, and I was feeling uncomfortable mimicking their movements, so I bowed out after several shrines.

Anh-Nguyet.

After about an hour and a half of walking up the slightly-inclined paved road ("I can totally handle this all the way up the mountain!" I naively thought), we finally entered the gates to the mountain. And then things got hard.

Luong-Man scrambled up to some rocks.

Spoooooooooooooooky spider-webs!

My intrepid students, fording a small river.

We stopped for a mid-morning snack. Still, I was in high spirits and unaware of just how hard the hike was about to become.

But then came 1000 steep rock stairs and boulders.

At this point, I was thinking, "I'm not going to make it to the top! Just leave me here!"

But, PHEW! We made it to the entrance of the actual Pagoda.

I didn't want to go into the pagoda because I was exhausted and cranky from the climb, and these girls were "having some problems" so they could not go to pray. (I am assuming that they were on their periods and that it's unclean for them to go into temples, if I had to throw out a wild guess.) So, we hunkered down in a shady area with a straw mat and took a lovely nap.

When the non-menstruators returned and woke us, we ate a much-deserved lunch of bread and rice.

On the climb back down, I was still cranky and far too tired, but luckily we stopped for ice cream mid-way down the mountain!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole day and captures just how tired all of us were on the way back. We opted to take a boat across that giant lake instead of walk down the paved road, an offer I was more than happy to take up. Here I am with Nguyet, resting on the boat.

Luong-Man looks very important and nautical, holding that rope!

This is my other favorite photo from the day. I think Yen looks so stunningly beautiful here!

Thuong and Linh.

Yen and Mai. As you can see, all of the girls brought hats because Vietnamese people like to stay out of the sun and preserve their milky-white skin. Naturally, they were very concerned about me not having a hat. Perhaps they should have been, because I came away from the day with cheeks much rosier than I had planned.

Yes, we climbed that mountain all the way back there.

After leaving Huong Mountain, we hopped back on the motorbikes to check out Dong Loc Junction. I was happy to be on the back of a motorbike for this adventure because it meant that I had plenty of time to observe the scenery and take photos. Here is the back of Linh's helmet, complete with a mushroom smoking a pipe and a mushroom turned into a house. Pretty trippy, right?

And then we arrived at Dong Loc Junction, which, as you read in my previous post, was INCREDIBLY powerful for me to visit.

Here is the memorial plaque for the 10 teenage girls who died here during the war.

In front of the shrine to the martyrs.

We arrived too late in the afternoon to qualify for a guided tour, which I really would have enjoyed to hear more about the significance of this site since my students were surprisingly unsure of the general history. Why there is a Navy bomber plane here, I am not sure, but I would really like to get the full story.

This was the eeriest part of the whole site: a monument made entirely out of B-52 bombs. 

Sooner than I would have liked, we hopped back on the motorbikes to make the long drive back to the University. Here is our formation of bikes.

And we caught a lovely sunset on the way back. The day lasted from about 7 AM to 7:30 PM, and I was never so happy to return to my empty and quiet room and to prepare myself an easy dinner and go to sleep.

 All in all, the day was wonderful. I was generally miserable during the mountain-climb, probably because I've fallen into quite bad shape since being sick and not exercising for several weeks. But the parts of the trip that did not include climbing up a crazy-steep mountain were totally enjoyable, and I really do love these students.

They would not allow me to pay any money to cover my cost of the trip, but they told me that I can make it up to them by taking them to Thien Cam Beach. YES PLEASE. As soon as the weather gets consistently warmer, I plan to take them up on this idea and have a class field trip to the beach, all on my dime. I would love to do something nice for these girls who have been so kind and so little-sisterly to me.