Day 4

Today I got up and went to the gym because I’m feeling like if I don’t im gannna gain some serious weight because of all the great food weve been eating here. After the gym and a shower I went down and had breakfast before we left for UEF in the morning. When we got to UEF we had a presentation on the Mekong Delta which started a little late because the presenter got stuck in traffic. The presentation was pretty good and I learned some good information about the Delta and the peeople who live and work there. Aparently the food there is amazing which I believe because most of Vietnam’s fruit, rice, and aquaculture come from the mekong region. The presenter also said that the food is very fresh and they do not fry everything like they do in Saigon. Im really glad we got a chance to learn more about the Mekong Delta since we’re going there on Saturday.
After the presentation on the Mekong we had our first vietnamese culture class. I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do in social situations. The vietnamese as a whole are very friendly people who will go to any measure to make sure their guets are satisfied even if it means not participating in certain activites themselves. Our teacher gave the example of a dinner where they will go out and buy the best foods and maybe they don’t have enough money to get enough for everyone at the dinner so they will serve the best foods to the guests and eat the lesser foods themselves. I also learned that you shouldn’t touch people on the head because it is bad luck and its also very bad to say that children are good looking or compliment them too much because it will invite bad spirits or ghosts to follow the child. I think this might be why when we go to say goodbye to the girls we meet and try to hug them it gets a little awkward but at least now we know.
After our culture class we had some time to kill so we took a lot of pictures with the UEF students and got to know them all better. They are all so nice and just seem genuinely glad we are here with them. I really hope to keep these relationships going because this place is amazing and I know I will be back someday and it would be awesome to have people here to contact once I get back here. After our little social hour we went to the schools cantine and had lunch. Today was pretty good for food with some soup with beef and potatoes and green beans with beef in it. There were also some seafood spring rolls that were pretty decent. After lunch we went back to the hotel to change into more business appropriate clothes before we went to the consoulate annex in the saigon tower.
We got to the tower a little early so we all got some baked goods at the coffee shop on the ground floor. The coolest thing though, was the exhibit they had in the lobby with 3-d TV’s. I think it is possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen TV wise and dad if you’re reading this we need to get one. When we went up to the annex I somehome managed to slip in without them taking my phone and camera, but I never got a visitor tag so I was a little afraid of getting into some trouble but not enough to say anything. The metting with Jennifer and Dave was really informational and I learned a lot about the foreign service and what their office does. They basically are here to protect and help American businesses move into Vietnam to sell their product as well as provide help for the companies once they get here. They also do a lot of market research to help track the growth of vietnam’s economic growth. They talked a little about internship opportunities that sounded a little interesting but I don’t think I could do what they do over here. The international aspect of it is very appealing though. When we finished our Q and A session it was my turn to present them with the gifts we brought for all the presenters and they seemed to like the Pitt pennant and thought the terrible towel was a pretty unique gift.
After the meeting with Jennifer and Dave we all walked to the market, and lucky for us it decided to downpour while we were walking and by the time we got to the market we were beyond soaking wet. It did help the temperature to drop and releaved some of the humidity so that’s a plus. While we were in the market Kyle, Matt, and I ended up roaming around to find kyle a new suitcase since the airline broke his. Watching him barter with the sellers was possibly the most entertaining thing I have ever witnessed. I ended up using my flip to take a video of the transaction. After kyle got his suitcase we all walked around some more and ended up at the dvd section. I ended up buying seasons 1-5 of weeds for about $7 so I was pretty excited with that purchase. I was really looking to find planet earth but they only had this rediculous 42 disk collection of every BBC production and while im sure it was cheap I couldn’t figure out what I would do with the other 40 disks. After buying some movies we went looking for t shirts and I think I spent 270,000 dong on two shirts. The original price was 420,000 dong but I got her down to 270,000. Kyle and Matt got it down to 200,000 for the same two shirts so I guess my bartering skills are a little lax but luckily I have another week to get them up to par.
While we were walking back Sarah said she would treat us all to dinner at some place near our hotel. What we didn’t know at the time is that the place was a very nice upscale restaurant and we all ended up paying for ourselves because it was a little pricy (by vietnam standarads). The food was really good but also very small. I got chicken stirfry with lemongrass. The most interesting thing though was Elizabeth’s meal which was some crazy looking lobster which they said was very good as well. When we got back to the hotel we all hung out for a while before we went to the nightclub Lush.

When we got to lush Everyone got in except Kyle and Matt and Andrew becauses they had shorts and flip flops on. So mike went in with everyone else[ because he was basically one of the girls at this point. Mister benedict arnold and all that.] and I went in real quick to tell them that we had to go back and get changed. When we got back to the hotel Kyle Matt got changed and we all got in the cab and went back to Lush.
Lush was a pretty cool place but it was really dark and really loud and pretty pricy (about $5 for a heiniken). We did some pretty crazy dancing that night and Mike did some pretty hilarious booty drops. Im pretty sure the vietnamese girls we were dancing with had no idea how to react to us but they seemed very excited and happy. I blew some kisses at them and they turned the brightest shade of red I have ever seen. I danced with one girl for a pretty long time and we started talking outside because it was so loud in there. She said she was trying to study in the US and was a econ major. While we were talking there was this incredible drunk vietnamese girl stumbling around. She actually walked up to the outdoor bar and tried to order a drink and got rejected and stumbled past us again. I asked her if she was okay and she said no and just disappeared. At this point everyone was pretty tired and we left for the hotel and day 4 was pretty much over.