Friday: Day 5

Last day of the week! We started out with breakfast, then more History and Culture class, and finally another Language class. I'm getting pretty good, if I do say so myself. We've all memorized a couple of the key phrases like "see you again" and "thank you," and we're using them all the time, even with each other. We learned the numbers today in preparation for going to the market on Monday. We'll have to use them to barter with the shop owners. This makes 5 languages that I can count to 10 in.

After lunch, we went to the US Consulate. It's basically an equivalent to the US Embassy. The real embassy is in the capital of Hanoi, and the Consulate is here in Ho Chi Minh City on the site of the old US Embassy in South Vietnam. So we got to step back on "US soil" in a way. We had to go through a bunch of security and leave all our cameras and phones at the front desk. We started out with a briefing from four different members of the State Department. They work in four of the different departments at the Consulate: economics, politics, consular assistance (which handles visas to America and helps take care of Americans abroad), and education. Each of the members gave a rundown of what they and their departments do at the Consulate, which was really interesting. Working for the State Department seems like a really cool job. The Q&A portion of the briefing turned into us asking questions about the department and how you can apply. It's definitely something that I would consider looking in to in the future. After the briefing, we took a tour of the grounds with the Consulate's resident historian. The former Embassy was the site of an insurgent attack that was part of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The Embassy grounds were breached by a group of Viet Cong insurgents, who killed some of the MP's who were defending the building. They didn't make it into the embassy, but it showed the public that the US government was a lot more vulnerable in Vietnam than they were previously thought to be. We walked around the grounds and got to see the original flower pots that the dead Viet Cong were photographed in. It was really surreal actually seeing it because we've been shown pictures of the area before.

After the Consulate, we walked a few blocks to the same building that the Commercial Service is in. Their facilities have an American Center, where Vietnamese students can come to study, and to get advice and help applying to American schools. The staff wanted us to talk to some Vietnamese students about American schools. A whole lot of Vietnamese students showed up, and so we split up into smaller groups to talk to them. We were only supposed to stay for a half hour, but we all ended up staying an extra hour talking to them. It was a really cool experience. We started out talking about American schools, and Pitt specifically, but it quickly turned into conversations about us and our lives. We asked each other about a whole bunch of things, like what we do for fun and what life is like in our respective countries. I got my group to make me a whole list of Vietnamese food that I need to try. Getting a chance to speak to a new group of Vietnamese students was an awesome experience. Unlike the UEF students, a lot of these students were engineering students, so it was cool being able to compare our programs and see what they learn and how it differs from us. I had a whole conversation with another mechanical engineering student. In the end, we had a whole lot of new Facebook friends, and some really great conversations to remember.

Friday night, we had a Guys Night. One of our new friends, Bo, took all the guys out to a hot pot restaurant. The restaurant was the most authentic place I've ever been to. We were the only non-Vietnamese people at the place. The restaurant was basically a big room with a bunch of small tables with little chairs haphazardly placed around them. It was a goat hot pot place, and the food was incredible. We started out with an appetizer that was basically the Vietnamese equivalent to balut. Balut is a Philippine dish that I first heard about on Survivor, and its basically a half-grown boiled duck egg. We were all really excited to try it, but it turned out that it just tasted like regular boiled eggs. After that, we had goat, which was pretty good, and then they brought out the hot pot. I love trying new foods, so this was perfect for me. The hot pot was a big bowl of broth and vegetables, into which we put brain and goat meat. I've never had brain before, but it was surprisingly great. The texture was really weird, but the flavor was great. We absolutely destroyed the food, down to the broth itself. It was definitely one of the coolest eating experiences I've ever had. After dinner, we found a cool coffee shop to hang out in, before heading back to the hotel tired and full.

Our first week has been great. I'm really excited for the weekend; we're going to the Cu Chi Tunnels on Saturday, and then the beach on Sunday. Our time here has been going by so fast so far, and every experience has been great.