Day 4!

Today was probably the most fun I’ve had in Vietnam.  First, we had a lecture on the history of Vietnam.  I did not know how much the Vietnamese had to go through in order to get their freedom and I now understand why they have such a proud culture here.  Then, we had language class where we learned how to introduce ourselves and say we go to Pitt.  The more we practice and repeat the words, the easier it is to understand them and the structure of the language.  After that we left UEF and went to Glass Egg Digital Media, which is an outsourcing computer company.  They design many characters and maps for video games, and their specialty is designing cars for video games.  I did not realize how expensive and time consuming it is to complete these designs; one car takes 200 man hours to complete and costs $30,000!  The two people who gave us the tour were the CEO and the CFO and they were some of the coolest people I’ve ever met.  They let us into their office where there was a beautiful view overlooking Ho Chi Minh City.  We were able to see the tallest building in the city from the office as well.  The CEO and the CFO also own the nightclub that we went to the second night and they said they could give us preferential treatment there.  I could not believe how nice these guys were to us even though we had just met them.  This was by far the best company visit to date because the people were so great and because I could see the workers using some of the things from computer programming that I learned this year, which was really cool.  When we got back to the hotel we went to dinner at a restaurant close by.  I wasn’t there for it, but Jared, one of the kids on the trip and my roommate, ate pigeon brain which is awesome but disgusting at the same time.  To end the night we went out with the Vietnamese students again and it was a lot of fun.  We met people from all over the world and hung out with them for most of the night.  They were from Israel, China, Australia, and Amsterdam and they were all really nice and awesome people.  We walked home and on our way we came across city hall.  It was a really nice building and in front of it there was a garden with a statue of Ho Chi Minh in the middle of it.  They call Ho Chi Minh “Uncle Ho” because of all the things he did for Vietnam.  I thought it was really interesting how much they admire him here.  I really like seeing all of the staples of the city and I want to explore a lot more of it.  There is so much to see here, and I hope I have time to see it all before I leave.

Things I learned:

The Vietnamese are some of the most forgiving people in the world.  They’ve been wronged by many countries but are always willing to forgive when the conflict is over.

Crab spring rolls are delicious.

“Cam on”- Thank you