Day One

Today started off quite early for me, waking up at 5:45. I’m pretty sure this is the earliest I have woken up in about a year. But after being awake for around 30 hours on the way here and sleeping for only 6 hours, I don’t know right from left. We took a short bus ride to the University of Economics and Finance. UEF held a reception ceremony for us with school officials and students from both universities present. The students from UEF sang a few songs for us and did a puppet show. They were very welcoming and friendly. The Vietnamese seem to be very up front and direct; the first question I was asked was if I had a girlfriend. They seem fond of abbreviations, referring to their university as UEF and ours as UP. After the reception we were led to a different room for a language class. We learned a few basic phrases in Vietnamese such as “hello” and “goodbye”. Vietnamese is tonal language and the accent placed on each word determines its meaning. We practiced five different accents today. Although the letters are the same as those in the English language, pronunciations are very different. Ho Chi Minh City itself is huge and very crowded. The streets are packed with hundreds of motorbikes that travel in massive packs and seem to never end. Crossing the street is a little scary the first time as you have to keep walking with multiple motorbikes going in front, behind, and around you. The food is very different from American food, consisting mostly of soup, rice and beef. I need serious practice with chopsticks.