Rehearsal Dinner

(PICTURE: My dad giving a speech at the rehearsal dinner. That's my Aunt Donna and Uncle Barry in the background. You can watch the video Barry is shooting on his blog.)

Unlike most rehearsal dinners, ours was two days before the wedding. And well, it wasn't so much as a rehearsal dinner as a dinner for out-of-town guests who came to the wedding...which I guess is what all rehearsal dinners really are since you never end up rehearsing anything.

Huyen and I had reserved a private room at a new restaurant in Hanoi that serves pretty good food. We chose the place because it's in quite a beautiful setting and there was enough space to fit all of our guests.

After chowing down on a whole bunch of food, everyone turned their attention to my father who gave a short speech thanking everyone for coming and congratulating Huyen and me. After my father finished, I took a speech out of my pocket. Well, I should use the word speech loosely since I basically wrote about 7 bullet points. I had the intention of writing a full speech but just never found the time once people started to pour into Hanoi. My bullet points though were more than enough to guide me through what I wanted to say. Here's the short summary of the speech:

Bullet point #1: I thanked my parents for being amazing parents. As you've read many times on the blog, I couldn't ask for more amazing parents. They've been supportive of me from day 1 and have taken Huyen into their lives with open arms.

Bullet point #2: I thanked everyone for coming. I mentioned how I was talking to a Vietnamese girl I knew the week before who was also getting married to a foreigner. She had asked me who was coming to the wedding and I told her about thirty people from out of the country. She looked shocked and told me that her soon-to-be-husband just had his parents and one sibling coming to their wedding. Not to sound like it is a competition, but it was just meant to underscore how lucky I felt having so many people fly halfway around the world to celebrate with Huyen and me. Of course there are a lot of people who didn't make the wedding for 1,001 different reasons, but it felt really amazing having so many people come so far to be with us.

Bullet point #3: I started out by saying an uber cheesy line like, "I've never been a person who believes in fate but there were so many fateful things that happened in order for Huyen and me to cross paths." I think right around the words "so many fateful things" that I began to choke up. Now mind you, I'm not much of a crier. I'm pretty sure I've cried less than 10 times since I was thirteen. In fact, I'm running the count through my head right now and I'm pretty sure I've cried seven times since middle school (not including when I weirdly teared up like 18 times while reading The Notebook and the time I choked up while watching some lame Sandra Bullock movie on a plane). Anyway, like most crying, it started a small domino effect. As soon as Huyen heard me choke up she started to cry which in turn made me cry more. Eventually I got a hold of myself and finished up telling the story of how Huyen and I met...and then we ate dessert.


(PICTURE: Me before the tears started to flow.)

Where's Justin and Dana?

(PICTURE: From left to right: Me, Dana, Adam, Zev, Hannah and Justin.)

Some of you might recall my blogs from a couple of years ago about my cousin Justin. Justin and I had an amazing road trip together and he is personally responsible for finding some of my favorite spots around Hanoi as he seemed to explore every nook and cranny while he was here. However, as I wrote then, the one downside of traveling with Justin is his propensity to be late for things. Or as we like to call it in my family, "Justin Time."

This time around Justin was traveling with my cousin Dana who is definitely more punctual than her brother. Having Dana as Justin's travel buddy made me feel like things would run a little bit more smoothly and we wouldn't have to delay any of the wedding festivities to look for my often wandering cousin.

Well, things were going as planned when my Uncle Barry got a voicemail message from Dana around 1PM saying that they had arrived in Hanoi. As Justin, Dana and I had discussed they would meet everyone at the Water Puppet Theater at 3:15. Conveniently the theater was just a two minute walk from their hotel so it would be nice and easy for them to get to after having checked in and relaxed for a bit. Well, sure enough, things didn't go as planned for too long. At 3:15 our tour group arrived at the Water Puppet Theater but didn't see Justin and Dana. Huyen immediately called the hotel to see if Justin and Dana had checked in. They had. She asked to be transferred to their room but there was no answer. As the clock began to countdown for the start of the show, everyone began to make their way inside. My mother volunteered to say outside with my cousins' tickets in case they showed up. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes into the water puppet show, my mother walked in alone -- no Justin and Dana.

After the show I went to the hotel to rest for a little while. When I got to the front desk, the receptionist said that Justin and Dana were in their room since their key wasn't at the desk. I went up to the room to find that all of their stuff was their but they weren't. I then attempted to rest for thirty minutes before dinner; a foolish attempt since my phone rang every minute or so with different relatives asking me different questions as well as a student of mine asking to bring me a gift (another future blog). After giving up on a power nap, I went downstairs to email Justin and Dana the schedule for that evening. About two minutes after hitting "send", a bunch of family and friends descended into the hotel lobby to go to dinner. Sure enough, just as the bus pulled up to the hotel, Dana charges in and says, "Everything is okay but Justin is with the police." Well, that's at least what, later in the evening, Dana told me she said. What I heard was, "Justin is with the police." As frightening as this might sound, everyone stayed very calm. In fact, my mom's cousin Pat (my first cousin once removed) was so calm that she said, "Hey Dana, what are we chopped liver? You don't say hello?".

It turns out that Justin had left his camera at a cafe, only to realize his gaff a minute after leaving. He and Dana then went back to the cafe but the camera was gone. They had then gotten the police involved and well, in the end, shockingly, the camera was gone for good. It was a sucky way to start their Vietnam trip but if anyone can let it roll off their shoulders it is Justin.

Now all that said, I've got to give some praise to my cousin Justin. I don't know who gave him a pep talk before the trip but he was constantly on time (or within a few minutes) and was always by my side to give me some help if I needed it. So in return for Justin's punctuality and help, I'm going to post my all time favorite photo of him. This was from my bar mitzvah:

Where's Huyen?

(PICTURE: Our wedding invitation. This one never got handed to my friend Van...who still made the wedding.)

During our tour around Hanoi, I kept getting asked the same question. No, not "What's this ___" or "What's that ___" but rather, "Where's Huyen?" Huyen was with us most of the day but kept disappearing at different sites since she had a lot of last minute wedding planning to do. You see, in Vietnam you don't send out invitations six weeks ahead like in American. Instead, you hand deliver them about 6 (or 1) day before.

When Huyen and I originally set our wedding date, her parents said, "Why are you telling us now?" Well, that's the general attitude with all Vietnamese when it comes to RSVP-ing. For everyone, they want to know just a few days before. Personally, I find this ludicrous as an anal-retentive always-like-t0-plan-ahead type of person. However, when in Rome...

On the day of the tour, Huyen kept ducking into cafes to call her friends and coworkers to get a head count for the wedding. Also, she was busy organizing the bus that would take our Hanoi friends to the wedding on the 19th. Then at some point she jumped on a motorbike taxi to run some other small errands. You know, like getting her wedding dress fitted (although there ended up not being enough time and she had to do this literally the day before the wedding).

The point is, while my family, friends and I were having fun touring around, Huyen was busy being our wedding planner.

Hanoi Kids

(PICTURE: Huyen with our two tour guides.)

I need to write a special thanks to our two tour guides Toan and Viet. Toan and Viet both are volunteer tour guides with the organization Hanoi Kids. Hanoi Kids is a very famous student organization which gives free tours to foreigners in exchange for the chance to practice English. Tra My, one of my favorite students, is a member of this organization and helped get us two tour guides for our day around Hanoi. Originally, Tra My was supposed to be one of our tour guides but she ended up having a final exam on the day of the tour. As much as I would have loved one of my students to lead the tour, our two other guides did a great job.


(PICTURE: Toan in action, telling us about Vietnamese kings and students.)


(PICTURE: Viet perfecting the tour guide point.)

The guides were quite informative and very funny. Toan immediately made a bond with Mark and Anthony who proceeded to corrupt him with false information about America. They told him facts like, "Everyone in America has a gun" and "We all have horses like cowboys." The three of them got along great all day and by that evening Mark and Anthony told me that Toan had facebook friended them (I think by the end of the trip they had at least 30 new Vietnamese facebook friends).

Huyen and I had thought about hiring a tour guide for the day but are really glad that we went with Hanoi Kids. I had a bunch of family members come up to me and say that they really enjoyed being lead around by students. Unlike with paid tour guides, you could tell that the students also loved being able to lead around foreigners.

So, if you're coming to Hanoi anytime soon, you might want to contact Hanoi Kids about giving you a tour! Here's their contact information:

Ms Loan -Tour operation Dept.

+84 972 518 680

Ms Hà Ngân - Tour operation Dept.

+84 166 503 4898

Mr Tùng

+ 84 972 880 551

hanoikidsvngmail.com

Tour of Hanoi

(PICTURE: Our tour group at the Temple of Literature.)

As a present to our guests, Huyen and I organized a tour of Hanoi on the 17th. We hired a small bus and picked up everyone in the morning at their hotels. We started the day off at the Army Museum where our tour guides (more on them tomorrow) told us about the organization of the museum and showed us the key exhibits. The Army Museum isn't my favorite museum but I like to take guests there because of the old planes, helicopoters and tanks as well as the historical citadel tower.


(PICTURE: Enlarge the picture and you can see my Uncle Barry at the top of the tower.)

One of the highlights of this stop was that there was a local school on a field trip at the museum. As everyone knows, there's few things in life cuter than dozens of children at a museum. Seemingly, every camera soon became pointed at the kids who were more than happy to pose for pictures. However, that wasn't the highlight; the highlight was when the students' teacher came up to Paul, the father of one of my best friends, and asked to take a picture with him. Well, he sort of didn't really ask so much as pull him in front of an old helicopter. And he didn't exactly have a camera of his own; he asked me to take a picture of him with my camera.


(PICTURE: Paul getting up close and personal with a local teacher.)

The next stop on our tour was the Temple of Literature, the first university in Vietnam. I've been to this historic site no less than ten times (and went again a week later with my buddy JR) yet this time was by far the most special. Seeing all of my family and friends walk around the ruins was really an amazing site to see.

(PICTURE: Hannah and me making our frog faces; the exact same picture we took two years ago.)


(PICTURE: My dad in front of a pagoda flag.)


(PICTURE: Mark and Anthony in front of a giant bell.)

After the Temple of Literature, we ate lunch at KOTO. KOTO is not one of my favorite restaurants for food but I decided to take everyone there for two reasons:
Reason 1: It's a nice and clean place which would please some of my non-street-food-eating guests.
Reason 2: More importantly, KOTO is a charitable organization that takes street kids and teaches them skills to work in the service industry.

My parents picked up the tab for lunch for everyone and made me very proud when my father said something like, "Lunch is on us. However, on your way out, please donate whatever you want to the charity." I thought this was pretty awesome of my parents.

Following lunch we went to the Hanoi Hilton, the famous prison where John McCain was imprisoned. Following our brief tour their, we boarded the bus and went to the Water Puppet Theater. If you're a long time reader of my blog, you'll know that I've always been anti water puppets. This hatred stems back to my first weeks in Vietnam when I saw an atrocious show in HCMC. However, I must admit, with the live music and the artistry of the puppets, the show in Hanoi was actually quite entertaining.

After the puppets finished, the tour ended and everyone had a couple of hours to relax before dinner...

My Wife's Name

(PICTURE: This picture makes more sense later in the blog entry.)

Before I begin to blog about the wedding, I need to take a step back and address an important issue: my wife's name.

In the past, the issue with Huyen's name was how to pronounce her name. Clearly her name isn't easy to say since most westerners have never known someone named Huyen. We covered this issue on September 18th, 2008 on a video on the blog. Check out that video for a quick refresher on how to say Huyen's name. Many of my family members used to say Huyen's name incorrectly but for the most part everyone has gotten it down by now.

But that's not what this blog is about. This blog is about knowing that her name is HUYEN and NOT NGUYEN. Nguyen is Huyen's last name. It is a very common Vietnamese last name that I'd say roughly 25% of the population has. For some reason though, in the last few months people keep emailing me, "Congrats to you and Nguyen" or "Tell Nguyen congrats" or something like that. Seriously more people have been calling Huyen by her last name than first. Recently one of my friends who spent a WEEK with Huyen emailed me, "Congrats to you and Nguyen." This sort of put me over the edge because my friend had spent considerable time with her so there really wasn't an excuse. I emailed him right back and said, "Dude, her name is Huyen!" My friend then immediately wrote back and apologized. He said, "I was 99% sure her name was Huyen but I looked on Facebook and it said Nguyen Huyen so I thought I had always been calling her by her last name."

Sooooooooo, let me just set the record straight: In many Asian countries, people put their family name first and their first name last. Yes, this can be confusing for us westerners but that's the way it is out here. Think about it this way: Do you know the famous basketball player Yao Ming? On the back of his jersey it says YAO, not Ming. That is because Yao is his family/last name. Ming is his first name.

Anyway, I appreciate the kind words people have emailed me but please in the future call my wife by her first name -- Huyen! Thanks.

For those of you who thought this blog was about Huyen taking my last name, that's not gonna happen. For one, I've always said that I would want my wife to keep her last name. Personally, I wouldn't want to change my last name so why should she unless she had a big desire to. Secondly, I can't imagine the paperwork headache we'd have to go through with immigration for her to change her last name. That's a hurdle I have no interest in jumping over. Thirdly, in Vietnam, women don't take their husband's name. Finally, I love Huyen's name just the way it is.

Okay, now without delay, the wedding posts...

Glowing

(PICTURE: The soon-to-be married couple a few days before tying the knot.)

Huyen and I went back to work on Monday despite being absolutely exhausted from the last couple of weeks. During my first class, my students naturally asked me a lot of questions about the wedding. I began to tell them everything and was absolutely glowing with happiness while recounting some of the stories (which haven't been recounted on the blog yet!). Well, after I finished smiling/talking for a solid 10 minutes, I turned to my student who had gotten married two days before Huyen and me. I said to her, "So ___ how was your wedding." She looked at me, gave a slight smile and then said, "Not good." My heart immediately sank and I felt like a total jerk for glowing about my wedding. I then said, "Why wasn't it good?" She then let out a little exhale and said, "Well, my husband and I were supposed to go to Sapa for our honeymoon but he had --- what's the word in English --- diarrhea and we couldn't go." I couldn't help myself but I let out huge explosive laughter. I thought she was going to say something like, "We called off the wedding" or "He got cold feet." Instead she told me (and her four coworkers in the room) about her husband's three day bout with the runs. After she finished describing his ailment I said to her, "I guess you had a pretty shitty honeymoon."

Over the next week or two (or as long as I can drag out these wedding posts) I'm going to try and recount all of the stories from the wedding and "honeymoon." So many things happened in a week that I'm sure I'll forget some things. However, I'll do my best to blog about all the highs and lows of the August-Nguyen wedding!