Happy Birthday to Me

On this day, April 18th, 2009, I turn 23. I am one of the oldest students on this trip, and my friends make fun of me for it. On the other hand, last night when I was playing Taboo at a Family Home Evening with a bunch of young expat Mormons living in Beijing (from UK, US, Korea, Malaysia, Germany, Italy), most of them were in their upper 20's, so I felt like the young one.

Here is a story about my birthday:

A few weeks ago our group of American students went to visit a group of Vietnamese students at Foreign Trade University in Hanoi. They gave a presentation on their school, and we told some about ours, and then one of their professors and one of our professors spoke each about the state of the Vietnamese economy, and the economic relationship between Vietnam and the U.S., especially in this time of financial crisis. Later the Vietnamese students walked us around their campus and eventually we all came back together for some gift giving from us to them and from them to us. It was a great opportunity to learn about the Vietnamese economy, but even more importantly our visit was an important step in building Carleton's relationship with FTU, and more broadly building a friendly relationship between Vietnam and the U.S.

At the very end of our meeting, one of our students, Carleton Singing Knight Ben Mirin, got up with a guitar to sing an American song for our hosts. They were very pleased, and responded with a Vietnamese song they all knew--a peppy song with a chorus that is simply "Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh" repeated over and over again. But then we both felt that we should find a song that both of our groups could sing. We stumbled over suggestions for a few moments, realizing that they didn't know the words to most of our pop classics, until finally we discovered that everyone knew how to sing "Happy Birthday." However, it was no one's birthday that day, so they asked if any one had a birthday in April. And what do you know: both myself and the Vietnamese student who had shown me around campus both had April birthdays. And so everbody sang, maybe a hundred people altogether, Happy Birthday. They sang it three times: once for me, once for my new friend, and once for both of us together. It was a formative and festive lesson in international relations.