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Monday, November 23, 2015

Bat Trang -- Hanoi Pottery Village


Last Friday, the kids were THRILLED to learn that Libby and I would be chaperoning the Middle School field trip to the pottery village on the outskirts of Hanoi.  The art teacher at St. Paul asked Libby to help out, and I tagged along as well.



Mr. Toby, the social studies teacher.  He's a great guy, and we were glad to finally get to know him since the kids talk about him so much.


The first part of the day was a tour of the ceramics factory.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.  These families were churning out thousands of hand-formed pieces of varying shapes and sizes.  It was pretty impressive:







These are the forms they use to make some of the pieces.  Again, hand-poured material into the forms.



We also came across a temple where a play was being performed, and live music was there.  






Good old Ming -- he was very eager to let everyone know he only paid 10,000 VND (about 40 cents) for his piece.  Libby gently broke the news to him that it was probably worth that much...




Getting ready for lunch:




I thought the chicken patty sandwiches were pretty good.  Noah and Carter may have disagreed with me:



After lunch the kids got to make clay sculptures and use the pottery wheels:


















This was a pretty popular piece for the kids:


Final stop of the day was the actual pottery market.  Turning 60 middle schoolers loose around a bunch of pottery -- what could possibly go wrong?!?





Best purchase of the day:




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