Autumn Festival, 9/10

Photos on this post are courtesy of Josh Strenger.

The Mid-Autumn festival is held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. This year it fell on Sunday, September 14th, but since we would be in the Mekong Delta that day, the language school teachers sponsored a celebration on the previous Wednesday. It is also called the harvest festival, and honors the children for all the help they have been during the year. Children dress up in costumes, and carry around lanterns like the ones our folks made, with the help of their language teachers.

The teachers cooked several delicious Vietnamese dishes to share with us, and the other guests. Many of the U.S. Consulate employees take language classes at VLS, so they were also in attendance.

No Mid-Autumn festival would be complete without the traditional dragon dance. Here we see the players preparing, and below is Cat with a new friend.

The festivities were capped by a bamboo stick dance, and VLS's own version of Vietnam Idol, featuring songs the students had been practicing in Vietnamese.