Vietnam- Concert Overload!

Saigon was a great city to visit, and I miss it a bunch. The huge street and food markets were unforgettable, and I will miss the busy nightlife as well. On our last day in Saigon, we sang at the Saigon Opera house. It was a truly beautiful venue, and was an honour to sing at. We performed by ourselves and also with two other choirs, one of which was a children's choir. The space created a beautiful sound and afterwards, we spent our last night in our homestays in Saigon. I haven't talked much about the Saigon homestay family. I didn't connect with them as much as I did the Hanoi homestay. But luckily, although we thought we were going to get a new family now that we are back in Hanoi, we are staying with the same family as before, and I am happier than ever.

Yesterday we arrived in Hanoi after many flight delays in Saigon and arrived quite late to a concert at a University. Many of the concerts that we do at different schools have the same reoccurring themes. The audience usually is attentive in the beginning, and then as the show goes on, the audience begins to talk a bit, and get reckless. Personally, I think our 18-song repertoire is a bit long for a possibly non-musical or non-English speaking audience. Sometimes I think the audience may get bored, maybe because of the language barrier or maybe because choral music is not their forte, but when we pull those two Vietnamese pieces out of our pockets and perform the hell out of em', the crowd always goes wild. At the opera house, while we were singing, the people began to applaud because they were so impressed by our knowledge of the language and musical skill. Today we performed at an International high school for a big group of students, and I was pleasantly surprised at the silence of them all. They were all so attentive and I didn't hear a peep out of them through all of our singing. After the performance, they all wanted to meet us so bad and wanted us to sign their notebooks... I felt like an actual celebrity. As a choir, we talked to the school's administrators about choir and Juniata and our feelings about Vietnam and travelling. It was a great time and I can tell they were all very impressed with us, and that in the next few years Juniata will most definitely be getting some students sent to them from that particular high school because of our visit ;).

After our high school visit, and excellent school cafeteria lunch, it really was outstanding, we headed to the VTV4 recording studio. VTV4 is a Vietnamese TV international English channel that many Vietnamese people from other countries watch. We recorded three songs and the session took about 3 hours. It was an interesting experience; we took many takes and the cameras got so many angles of us. The segment will most likely air in a few months, so I'll have to keep a lookout for that. The two concerts in one day were very draining forme, so I was happy to get back home to my host family and enjoy a delicious homecooked meal of bamboo soup and rice, chicken and snails, some salad greens and goose too! We had some papaya and grapefruit for dessert and then went to the rooftop cafe on the top of the apartment building with my host sisters and played some games and talked. It was a great night. Tomorrow will be a day of vocal rest because we will be travelling to Ha Long Bay, where we will swim and kayak and eat great food. I can't wait!

-ECM