With all the celebrated holiday here in Viet Nam, Tet Celebration was one of the most awaited by both foreign and Vietnamese students. Most likely, every Vietnamese student were excited to invite the foreign friends to their hometown, while some were very anxious of what was going to happen with a lot of stores closed. I was one of those lucky students that were invited by their Vietnamese friends to their hometown. And here’s what I learned.

Tet is the celebration of both lunar New Year and the entry of spring; we know that there are four seasons in the north of Vietnam. In the Celebration of Tet there are 3 main days that are traditionally considered the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd of January in lunar Calendar. It is celebrated with food, family, fireworks, and even giving.

Before everything I have experienced, I was given the university Goods to last the holiday. We were so thankful to our Rectors, Vice-Rectors, Teachers and many more that gave us a lot of food, drinks and even lucky money.

While I was with a Vietnamese family, I was to greet every single person part of the family, we were introduced to the father, mother, sister and etc. I got to know my host family a lot and gave them gifts for the holiday. They took care of me for almost three weeks, I was so happy. My first week I was very nervous and kind of pleased of how I became like a family member.

I have experienced making Nem (Spring roll) which was a lot of fun and preparing for the meal, eat together and just try to communicate with everyone even though there was a language barrier, it was a good practice. We were invited by our teacher to eat at her house. Fast forward on the eve of the celebration of Tet I got to experience watching the show that only premiered that day, Tao Quan 2019. After watching the show, I went out to visit some of my friends near the area and wished my Vietnamese classmate good. When it was almost midnight, I went to the perfect view watching many people on the streets everyone outside just to watch the fireworks that was 15 minutes long.  Still it was a so much fun. The next days I visited more relatives of my friends and got a ton of Lucky Money and I got to travel to Ha Noi. Last but not the least experience we were treated to eat a restaurant sponsored by our very own Rector, with our fellow classmates and teacher, Dr. Nguyen the Hung.

Luckily my experience was… was both educational and fun. At the end of the day I was so lucky to be given an opportunity to spend the holiday to be hearing great stories, see new places, and discovering new things.