Day Four

Today we learned about Vietnamese culture. We were taught about the differences between the city dwelling people and the traditional rural farming people. The city dwelling people have adopted the logic based competitive spirit of many Westerners as they have been exposed to Western culture. This is in contrast to the people of the rural areas of Vietnam. They are a very loving and emotionally based people. They are very friendly and happy. After this class, we had a language class. We learned about numbers and days of the week and months of the year. Today’s company visit was to the U.S. Department of Commerce which is an extension of the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. The presenter was extremely knowledgeable and very well spoken. I learned alot about the role that the U.S. government plays in helping American companies to export their products to other countries. He was able to answer questions about pretty much anything concerning Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. It was very impressive. After the Consulate visit we went to dance lessons with UEF students. It was very fun and gave us a good chance to interact with our friends from UEF. I was pretty terrible at the beginning but I managed to learn the Tango pretty well. After the dance lessons, Tuan and a few other UEF students took us to a street food shop. It was pretty good, even though some people had a little bit of trouble with the food.