On Tuesday, our second day, I woke up really early for some reason. Breakfast was amazing again. It doesn't change that much, but the food is still great so it's not an issue. We bused over to UEF, where we started the day off with a lecture on Urban Development in Saigon. The Vietnamese professor who gave the lecture basically read off slides for the majority of the lecture, and we have all the slides printed out in a booklet, but the Q&A at the end was interesting. It's really cool to learn a bit about the development in the area and get a different perspective from home. So far, I've seen more construction in this city than I've ever seen in any other cities around the world, so it was really cool to learn a bit about that development and its effects.
After the lecture, we had a little downtime, so a bunch of us went down the street to a coffee shop and got ca phe sua da ("iced coffee" in Vietnamese). I have a feeling we'll be drinking a ton of it over the next couple weeks. We then went back to the school for another language class. We're slowly learning how to say all the basic phrases, like "nice to meet you," and how to give basic information like where we go to school. Ironically, there are a few key things they haven't taught us, though, like how to say "yes" and "no". Our teacher is adorable, and she's really good about making sure we can all pronounce everything and we're getting all the tones right.
Our lunch was amazing as usual. They bring us a bunch of fruit after the main food, and its some of the best fruit I've ever had. The mango is absolutely amazing!
After lunch, we had our first site visit. We drove across town to Phu My Hung, a new residential and business development area. Our visit was with the company that manages the development. Basically, the area was once a jungle, but the original CEO of the company envisioned a modern area where people could live and work, and managed to raise the money to begin developing the area. The briefing was really cool. They gave us a couple presentations about the history of the area and the work thats currently going on. The company basically does things like building the infrastructure of the community, and they manage who builds in the area and what businesses move in. Its an entirely planned community, with apartment complexes, commercial businesses, presentation halls, parks, and recreational areas. They're not finished with all the building yet, but the stuff they have is really cool. After the presentations, we all got back on the bus and one of the representatives of the company gave us a tour of the area. They have a bunch of different schools, many of them international schools. It actually seems like a really cool place to live.
Tuesday night, we had our first real taste of Vietnamese street food! A bunch of the UEF students took all of us out for the night. We started out at a pho place. I've had pho before back in the US, but this was amazing. We went to a small local pho shop, and it was incredible. I destroyed mine. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the UEF students decided that the massive bowls of pho weren't enough food for the night. We went to a square in front of the local cathedral, and they sat us down on newspaper and brought us a whole bunch of different street foods. There were big containers of tofu and meats, some sort of sauteed corn salad, crispy rice paper tacos with meat and spicy sauce inside, and bags of rice noodle salad. It was probably the most amazing spread of food ever, but we were all so full from the pho that we could barely eat any of it! We tried it all, though, and it was worth it.
After eating, we walked down to the main street in the center of the city. That part of the city is the really touristy and nice area, with all the nice restaurants and fancy hotels. It was really cool to see the "downtown" area of the city. From some street vendors, we bought a bunch of these light-up helicopter spinners that you launch into the air with rubber bands. I've seen them all over Europe, and it was cool to get some here, too. They were my dad's favorite, so I'm sure he'll be ecstatic to hear that I got more.
In all, it was a great day. We learned more Vietnamese, had our first site visit, and got to hang out with the Vietnamese students. I can't wait for tomorrow.
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