Off to vacation

Yes, you read that right. While my fellow students in Germany are currently struggling through exams (Good luck to you!), I now have two weeks of vacation. The reason is Têt, the most important festival in the Vietnamese calendar. Like in China, the new year is celebrated according to the lunar calendar, which also marks the beginning of spring. Similar to our Christmas, it is a classic family celebration with good food and gifts. After class, we wished each other a happy new year and said goodbye, my fellow students to their homes and me to vacation. Tomorrow afternoon, I will take the plane to Da Nang and stay there for a week to explore beautiful Central Vietnam. My fellow student Hoang told me that the people there have a funny accent, although I'm afraid I won't notice it at all, because which Vietnamese would find a Saxon with a saxon accent as amusing as I do? In any case, I'm really looking forward to this trip.

Last week, I was invited as a speaker to the Mock Conference, a conference for aspiring interpreters. In addition to the presentations by an American and a French professor, I gave a lecture on digitalization at German universities. The reason for this was not necessarily my expertise in this area, but rather that as a native speaker, I was a good example for translation. After the lectures, I exchanged ideas with my "colleagues" for some time and discussed, among other things, how foreign language teaching in schools can be improved.

Last Friday, I visited the ethnological museum. While inside the museum, I learned a lot about the 54 ethnic groups of Vietnam and their traditional way of life, outside I visited the different dwellings of the locals. The museum also has a small creative workshop where you can produce a type of stamp print and play traditional games.

During a walk through Hanoi, you often come across outdoor fitness facilities located by lakes and in parks. The people of Hanoi meet there early in the morning or after work to do sports. Often, music can be heard from large speakers, which either animates to Zumba or social dancing.

The great thing about living in a new city is that I can discover and experience extraordinary things almost every day.