O.K. Sorry about the delay on getting my posts out. I just have been really busy. (Well, Sumner also has been putting on the "lovely" photos.) So this section is all about me and my favorite moments in Sa Pa. Sa Pa is this really quiet, beautiful, peaceful place to stay at. And a wonderful place to spend your birthday at. While we were in Sa Pa, we did a lot of treks and and just plain hanging out! AND a lot of shopping. If you want to buy just one simple purse, trust me, by the end of the day, you end up with a lot of other stuff. That happened to my mom. she was looking for some purses to get for friends and family, And she ended up with about...10 other ladies standing around her trying to make mom buy things from them.
The culture groups in Sa Pa are several different ethnic groups including the Red Dao (pronounce it zow), H'mong (pronounce it Huhmong.) Tay (pronounce it tie), Black H'mong, and Flower H'mong. Our tour guide's name was Su Mai, and she came from the Dao group, but her husband is from the H'mong group. It is kind of amazing, because Su Mai has a three year old daughter and her daughter can speak three different languages already! She speaks Vietnamese, Dao, and H'mong. Wow that's a lot of languages at age three!
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So,I had my 11th birthday in Vietnam. Well according to the American calender. If I went by the Lunar calendar, I would have turned 12. Anyway, I was supposed to have my birthday at the H'mong Mountain Retreat , but things did not work out for us. We were supposed to stay two nights at the Mountain Retreat, but the first night we stayed in this original H'mong house there were rats and mice climbing on our stuff and over our beds, AND for some crazy reason the staff put corn,(FYI the mice and rats love corn, especially dry.) in the house, so in the morning, there was corn all over the floor in our family/living room. So my mom asked to stay in the Sa Pa Rooms that we had previously stayed in. Thanks goodness! So obviously I was not made to live in a H'mong house with the rats and mice. :-) So I had a wonderful birthday party at the Sa Pa Rooms. I did a cooking class that day, so my teacher, he made me a wonderful coffee cake with candles and on the cake he wrote " happy Birthday Hannah" AND the entire staff sang Happy Birthday to me.
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Have you ever spent a day playing with kids just your age who live in a totally different world,eat different foods, and talk a whole different language? Well, my family did it, and it was a blast. It is called a home stay. Usually the books say that you don't do much with the family, but I think they were wrong. Sumner and I played a game with the two kids from our host family. For the game we had a thing with a feather and we tossed it with our feet back and forth. It is similar to juggling a soccer ball,but harder. We also ate sweet potatoes around an open fire in the floor. Did you know that the pigs, yes the PIGS get their own cooking pot? AND that dogs are the lowest on the priority list. Those are some spoiled pigs.
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Now I think I will not need any more exercise for the rest of my life. Why? Because mom, Sumner and I went for a 9 kilometer (about 5 1/2 miles) trek to a little town called Taphin. That was the village that Su Mai ( Our guide.) is from. Then the next day we went to two villages. All together the trek that day was 14 kilometers (8 1/2 miles). it took about 2 1/2 hours to get to a town called Lao Chai. Then one more hour and we got to Tavan. Then instead of walking all the way up a steep hill, we took a bus the rest of the way to the H'mong Mountain Retreat. What a day.
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