Last Monday, up at 5am: my students, Eric (they call him Mr. Eric) and I went on a field trip to two companies outside of Hanoi: A bamboo furniture company and a tile/brick company. The bus took us as far as the roads could take them, then we walked the rest of the way through a small village. It's harvest time in Vietnam for hay and rice which is dried in the streets (like in the photo above).  We also 'met' farm animals along the way as they just walked freely through the village.

The bamboo furniture manufacturer was a small operation- various sizes and types of bamboo were heated in a large oven- the door being sealed with mud mixed with straw and soot. The woman in the hat below showed my students the process. There was also a man sitting at what looked like an antique machine, drilling holes through bamboo at designated locations to later be pieced together into furniture.

The supervisor of the operation invited Eric to have a cup of Vietnamese green tea, with the students standing around translating for them. He also invited some of the students to have tea- they were delighted. Men in the Vietnamese culture love to get together, chat, and drink Vietnamese Green Tea (and rice wine, of course). It was no surprise that in the middle of the production floor was a table with plastic chairs all around, a tea pot and small 2 oz. ceramic tea cups.

Waiting for the bus to pick us up to transport us to the next company, the students ran up a hill with me in tow to take yet another group picture- they love having their pictures taken!

At rice harvest time, the rice is dried on the side of streets and highways- the perfect place for this activity. It is my understanding that this is illegal but unenforced.

The tile/brick company was much larger, though still small in size and very labor intensive. For the bricks, the clay is shoveled into a large hopper, gets molded and spit out onto a conveyor belt. From there, attendants take the molded bricks to a pallet, stacked eight high and then into the oven it goes. it then gets depalletized into carts and then restacked to cool and dry.

Day over and a great time was had by all!