The First Days in Hanoi

Some views of the Hanoi Seminary. There are over 200 seminarians who go to school here during the fall and spring semesters. They have mass at 5:00 a.m., breakfast, then go to classes until lunch. They study and work during the afternoons and evenings. The only time they can go off the grounds for personal reasons is on Sunday afternoons. The guys seminarians also do wonderful ministries in the city like working with the homeless children.

The seminary was built over 100 years ago and is still a strong building. It is made of cement and has withstood the weather well (nice alliteration always helps). Here is the courtyard where the seminarians get to play football (soccer) and badminton. You can see the gray bell tower of St. Joseph's Cathedral peeking over the low trees.

I really didn't find the mosquitoes or other insects to be much of a problem or to be numerous at all, but this critter was over one of the urinals in the men's room off of the dining room. I decided to name him Spidey. He was about 8" from tip to tip. Or was it a she?

We went out to dinner in Hanoi and had the pleasure of hearing true Vietnamese folk music. The instrument on the right is a Dan Bau which has only one string. This is one of the most well-known traditional Vietnamese instruments. It has the most beautiful sound. The one of the left is a 36-stringed Dan Tam Thap Luc. I was floored when the duo played "Scarborough Fair" and it sounded better than Simon and Garfunkel.

Turtle Lake, the most beautiful lake in all of Hanoi, and there are seven of them. There is a wonderful story about a turtle that helps to save Viet Nam, and that it will come again when the country needs it. Check out the story: http://beifanchina.com/hanoi/01hanoi-turtle.html

A Buddhist shrine on an island in Turtle Lake. You can see the people going up the grotto hill to light incense. It is a very quiet and holy place where you can truly feel the presence of faith.

This is the large room at the seminary. Close to the camera you can see Xavier, Huggy, Bill, and Tony. Behind them are the sisters (Sisters of the Lovers of the Holy Cross) and behind them the seminarians and priests. It was a large group and so full of fun. I think when we weren't studying or practicing we were laughing.

Here we are at mass in the seminary chapel. It was afternoon and the temperature inside was high, but the feelings were heartfelt and the music exquisite...

...perhaps because of Fr. Luis' playing! He made that keyboard sound like a Wurlitzer with all those pipes. Unfortunately, he couldn't come up from below the stage like at the old Loew's Theater in Syracuse.

Dong Vo, S.J, giving the final instructions...and Yosup Joo in the background after finishing his best impresssion of Carlos Santana. Dong is from Saigon, or as Tony Sauer likes to call it, HCMC. We got to meet Dong's sister Ann later. She's a really nice person who apparently is nice enough to put up with Dong.

The entire group: sisters, seminarians, priests, and crazy Americans. This is the beautiful grotto to Mary on the grounds of the Hanoi Seminary built many years ago. We were all together for only three days before we divided into four groups, but it was a difficult parting. Lots of hugs and tears, but we were to return to the same place in a month, so it was only "So long" and not "Goodbye."

Getting There and Settling In

Jerry and Sue, my best buds, drove me to SFO. I called my dad one last time and then handed over the credit cards, the phone, the iPod, and said "goodbye" to California for a month.


At SFO - My China Airlines 747 standing ready for me to board. I met a friendly professor form Taipei who was in Las Vegas for a convention. We had an interesting conversation about both universities and computers. He also pointed me the right way to my plane from Taipei to Hanoi.






Taipei airport at 3 a.m. Very quiet and very clean. They even had machines that dispensed cold filtered water. The people of Taiwan think of everything.

Yes, an elevator in a glass tube to take you down to your gate. Lots of fun to watch. The air conditioning was on full blast and I only had on one of those jungle shirts from REI that wick the perspiration from your skin...perfect for the countryside of Viet Nam, bad for the arctic blasts inside this terminal.

Fr. Luis Calero, S.J., from Santa Clara University, making nice with the young lady as his Hanoi Hotel. Those anthropologists are real charmers.

My room during my first visit to Hanoi. It was small, on the fifth floor (walk up five flights and you have done your cardio for the day). I enjoyed the A/C, but the little ants made the place seem a bit small. And I really appreciated the mini-bar, which you can see on the table between the beds. The best part of the room was being able to go in the hallway outside the door and watch and listen to the rainstorms that hit the city while I was there.





My bathroom in Hanoi with the ubiquitous shower over the toilet. It was kind of awkward the first few times, but it's all about "accepting and adapting" as my friend put it. Of course, you always had a wet toilet seat, something that would have made mom very mad. Also notice the hot water heater over the toilet. Got to turn it on or it's icicles from the shower head. But I've got to say it was all very clean and neat. Not bad for $23.00 a day.