Easter Workshop

Saturday of Easter weekend we held a workshop at the Cafe to help students get a handle on the holiday.  Among the guests (mostly college students) was one older man who claimed that he was there to improve his English.  He watched the proceedings very carefully, but didn't participate in anything (until finally Janet convinced him to dye an Easter egg).  When the workshop was over, he abruptly left.  I suppose there are other ways to interpret his actions, but I'm living in a Communist country and we had advertised an Easter workshop online--I am pretty sure he was sent there to watch and make sure we were flying straight.

And we were.  I used Google search to show what comes up if you search "Easter Holiday" and another if you search "The First Easter."

     


We talked for a time about the cultural practices of Easter: pastel colors, bunnies, and eggs--that sort of thing.  We dyed eggs and painted with coffee (Karen is here to visit: http://coffee-art.com/about).

Then we talked about Roman occupation of Israel and the practice of crucifixion as a method of dealing with subjugated peoples.  The most famous crucified person is Jesus, of course, and so as we narrowed in on him we showed video clips to help explain the historical context of Easter.  One nice thing is that people here are no strangers to resurrections.  It's not that they're exactly commonplace, but there are enough resurrections going on, even in modern times, that the notion of rising from the dead isn't the game-stopper that it is for westerners.

And then we gave away some more prizes and wrapped it up and were done.  No public prayers or invitations--nothing that would be improper.  Some students were very, very interested in the movie clips, so after the workshop we asked those ones if they'd want to watch the whole movie sometime.  Yes!  That would be fantastic!  So we've arranged a time this week when we can get together with them and explore more.  That's exciting!

This week is Michael's birthday, so the topic on Tuesday night at Vision Cafe is "Teenagers."  We're planning to eat hamburgers at Burger Bros beforehand, and if the weather cooperates we'll hit the beach in the afternoon.  A good week to turn 13 in Vietnam.