past week

I have now spent a full week in Viet Nam. Here is a break down of what I have experienced this week and some of the things I have learned.

Day 2

The high point of this day was after our classes in the morning. We over filled the elevator with 11 people and when the door opened to let us out at the first floor, something snapped and the next thing I know we are free falling into the basement. Although this was very frightening, it was a good learning experience. I learned that we are in fact much larger than the average Vietnamese person and also that reading and obeying all posted warnings is a good idea. After that, we went to Glass Egg Digital Media. This company was very interesting to me because they designed video games. They were currently working on a racing game and it was incredible how talented their staff was. This was a good site visit to start the trip because it set the bar high and got all of us very excited to go on the others. That night we went to a local night club here in HCMC called Lush. It was really fun and pretty westernized so our group was very excited.

Day 3

On day 3 we had our culture and language classes as usual in the morning and then we went to the corporation called Phu My Hung. This site visit was really cool because this company was in charge of developing south Saigon. Their design was incredible. The layout of the proposed new city center was very modernized and very beautiful. That night, we went as a group to the Rex Hotel. After the Rex I convinced a few of the group members to come with me to the BB club. We stayed there for a little while but ended up leaving. Then, on the way home from the club i was invited by a Vietnamese man to join him and his 2 friends at their table on the street for drinks. My other group members left because they wanted to sleep but I am very glad I stayed and could have such an authentic experience with natives here. They were very welcoming and helpful. They helped me with my Vietnamese language skills, especially my pronounciation.

Day 4

This day was different because we didnt have our normal classes in the morning. Instead we went to a high school for gifted students. This was really cool because the students were very friendly and much different from what i was used to. After the high school we went to a site visit with a law firm. This site visit nice because the man running it was very knowledgable. This was a very hard day for me because I became quite dehydrated. I have realized that the weather here is much different than what I am used to. I have been uncomfortably hot ever since we arrived but it never affected me that badly before. After the site visit i took a long nap and then woke up to go shopping with some of our friends here. We have befriended a few Vietnamese students named Khoa and Chi. They took us to the local market place where we could buy many types of goods. It was a definite advatange to shop with them because they knew how to bargain. They got us all great deals on everything we bought. After that, a few of us went to this Hotel called the Majestic. When we arrived it was closed so we looked for somewhere else to go. We went to a club but it was too expensive and loud. We then continued down the street and saw a place with very cheap drinks so we proceeded inside. The minute the door opened i got a bad feeling about the place. There were only women inside and they were all dressed provocatively. Upon our entrance they all stood up and began to look at us. We realized that we were obviously at a brothel so we quickly ran back out the door. To finish the evening we got little kiddy chairs and sat outside a local store to drink. This sounds strange but the Vietnamese do this just about all day long. Its not strange at all here and we refer to it as doing work because thats all we see people doing.