Day 11

I woke up today very excited because today was the day for our soccer match against the students of UEF. After a good breakfast Dr. Berman reminded me that I was to be player-coach because he doesn’t really know to much about soccer and he deemed me worthy of coaching our team to victory (ha). After getting on the bus to UEF everyone was joking with me about how I have to give a pre game pump up speech and I really am not so great at those.

After getting to UEF we were met at the top of the staircase by the students from UEF and were each given numbers to correspond us to a group. My group obviously was the best. At first Tony got up on the microphone and welcomed all of us. Then he sang a duet with another girl to us which was really awesome. They both sounded great. After the singing we got into our groups and talked about things like how we got involved with the Plus 3 program through Pitt and how they could maybe come to visit us sometime in the future. After a while we were told we needed to come up with group names and a slogan. Our team was team “95!” and our slogan was “Mot Hai Ba Y0!!” because we are all “old goats” with lots of experience. Mr. Tin really liked our group as well as group “75!”.

After we got our names and slogans we moved on to more fun activities. They asked for two volunteers, a boy and a girl, and I immediately got up there with a girl from UEF to represent our team. When they blindfolded me and put a thing of yogurt in my hand things got a little crazy haha. Apparently I was to feed the girl with me yogurt blindfolded before the rest of the teams finished. I thought I was doing pretty well because I didn’t spill any of it on her but apparently it was all about speed and not accuracy. After the yogurt races we all joined together and took lots of pictures and watched a short video about what we need to do to make the world a better place. The video was really touching and I think it really hit the mark for all of us. After the video we all sang another Michael Jackson song and just enjoyed being with each other. We went around and gave everyone hugs which is so fun especially because I could totally just scoop up 3 Vietnamese girls and just walk out with them because they are so little haha. Everyone is so nice and I really hope to be able to come back and see them again. At the end of our hug session Tony grabbed the microphone again and announced it was time for the Soccer game and we all got in the vans and headed to the stadium.

We played on a small turf field that was pretty nice, and the teams were 5 on 5 (including keepers). The kids from UEF and ICP were all really good but they were all much smaller than us and were easily moved off the ball. When we first started playing Matt, Kyle, Andrew, and I were all on the field and Mike was between the posts. We were doing really well and having so much fun. I think it was 3-0 us before we subbed ourselves out. When the girls got in it was really funny to watch. It was so unorganized but everyone looked like they were still having a blast. I felt really bad because Rayna was still feeling a little sick and just sat on the sidelines the whole time. After we dominated the kids from ICP we played another match with the kids from UEF. This game was a little closer but that’s because we mixed up the boys and girls ratio a little. It was so much fun and I got to meg my friend on the UEF team who also happened to be the keeper. The game was so fun and everyone was having a great time. It was however extremely hot and we were all sweating bullets. I would have loved for a cloud to come eclipse the burning sun just for a little. After the games we got together and took a group picture and then more social pictures with all the kids. Some of the kids from the ICP team (The better team) came up to me and told me I was the best player on the team when they took pictures with me. I think it’s kind of funny because I’m really not that great I am actually a defender at home and they thought I was a star striker or middy haha.

After all the photos were taken we headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up before we headed out to the War Remnants Museum. We had invited Tony and his friends to come with us and they said they’d us there. The museum was really a great thing to see. After being in Vietnam and hearing about the war from our new friends and listening to Dr. Berman talk about what he went through and his opinions I had really been excited to see the museum. We got there and looked at all the weapons they had from the Americans as well as the French from when they occupied Vietnam. I saw graphic pictures of terrible things done to civilians and people blow to pieces by the bombs we dropped or frag grenades. I read accounts of terrible massacres that happened at My Lai that were obviously false in their exact account but still held some truth to them. Just seeing the Vietnam war from the opposite perspective was really a great experience and I am very glad that Dr. Berman made this a part of our trip. Tony and some of his friends arrived and they brought us some drinks because they are just the greatest people. It was a really great thing to have Tony with us to tell us about how he felt about the war. He told me that his family is originally from North Vietnam and that he had a grandfather who was a great pilot in the North Vietnamese Army. I asked him if he was upset about the war but he said that he was really to young to remember it and he was lucky enough that his family wasn’t that affected by the war (the were not from the South). He said he was very glad we were here and that we had become like brothers now. A little later on at the museum we went to see the tiger cages where the American soldiers kept Vietnamese prisoners. These cages were so small and dark, I don’t think anyone could have survived living in them. The way the prisons worked is that there were cages all around with the bars at the top and American soldiers would walk on top of them on a walkway and throw everything down to them. It looked like an awful place to live and a terrible experience to endure.

On a happier note we were supposed to go to dinner with some kids from ICP so we all went back to the hotel to get cleaned up and to go shopping a little before dinner. Kyle, Mike and I all went to go find new soccer jerseys to give away as gifts for people from home. We also ended up at the market to get Mike a new suitcase to bring home his souvenirs. We had already gotten the address of the place for dinner from Julie earlier so we headed over there to meet everyone.

We met up with ICP kids at this really cool restaurant that had all the food on a conveyer belt and you just picked your type of soup to cook everything in. I got Thai which was spicy but really good. I had been trying really weird things the whole trip but tonight I had the most disgusting thing ever. I ate a half developed duck egg. I mean you could literally see little feet already there while you were putting the whole thing in your mouth. I almost threw up multiple times in my mouth but I did manage to keep it down. After that we immediately bought a bottle of sake to get the taste out of our mouths. The kids from ICP were all really cool and nice and they all wanted to stay in touch with us. It was really nice to see them because we only really saw them the first day because they have a different school schedule than the kids from UEF.

After dinner we met back up with everyone and Mr. Tin in the lobby. He had been talking all week about how he was going to take us out dancing and he kept his word. Tony even came with us. We headed to a club called Gossip which was pretty upscale by my standards and even had a 100,000 dong cover charge but it did include a free beer. The club had a really cool little dance floor but it was really crowded and I don’t really like it was the guards touch you every time you walk by. So I headed to the third floor to just look out over everything and just enjoy the atmosphere. The club was pretty fun but Tony had to leave a little early and I was starving at the end of the night so I went back up to my third floor and ordered some pasta that Mr. Tin was nice enough to buy me. I had been talking to one guard up on the third floor all night and he seemed to be a really cool guy. After I got some food the rest of us decided to leave (Kyle had left a little earlier because he was tired). Today was another great day and I am getting really sad thinking about how tomorrow is our last day. I am excited to have our little party with our friends from UEF at a karaoke bar tomorrow night though!