Dvorak Night

(PICTURE: Back row from left to right: Sebastian, Mark, Huyen, Me, Masumi, Kensuke, Herb, Anthony and Mark. Front/Middle row from left to right: Barry, my mom, Donna, Pat, my dad, Heather, Paul and Urszula.)

By the 16th, fifteen people had already arrived in town. As a present to the early arrivers, Huyen and I took everyone to see the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra at the Hanoi Opera House. As I've written on the blog before, going to the opera house is one of my favorite things to do. You can often see amazing performances for extremely low prices. When the Opera House announced their December schedule, I quickly snatched up tickets for everyone thinking it would be a relaxing way to adjust to the craziness of Vietnam. Well, between jet lag and the calming sounds of Dvorak, it turned out to be too relaxing for some. At some point I turned around and saw no less than half of my guests sleeping! Yeah, I guess listening to classical musical on a few hours sleep isn't the best idea.

In a case of it being a very small world, the conductor of the performance that night was Honna Tetsuji who is the music director and principal conductor of the the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra. When I emailed my guests to see who wanted to go to the symphony, I got a very excited reply from Masumi and Kensuke who told me that Honna Tetsuji was from Koryama, the city they're from and that I lived and worked in last year. Masumi and Kensuke actually emailed Honna Tetsuji and then briefly met up with him backstage after the show.

With just a few days to go before the wedding, everything was really coming together!