Week one recap

Hey everyone! 

This blog has been an epic fail, so I'm going to do a quick recap of the week.

Day 1
We left Pittsburgh May 3rd very early in the morning for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We had a total travel time of 28 hours ahead of us split between flights to Newark, Hong Kong, and eventually HCMC. Our longest flight was 16 hours, and was from Newark to HK, and was surprisingly not as bad as anticipated. We reached Vietnam around 11pm Sunday night, and went straight to the hotel to rest up for the very busy two weeks ahead.

Day 2 
On our first day in country we started the day at the University of Economics and Finance where we would spend a good bit of our time throughout the week. The had an opening reception where we were shown some traditional Vietnamese dances depicting the three regions of Vietnam. We were then given gifts and taken into our first language class. Learning Vietnamese is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. There are 29 letters and 6 tones that make up all of the words. For example bá, ba, bà, bả, bạ, and bã are all completely different words with very, very different meanings. After the epic fail of language class we went on our first company visit to Phu My Hung with is an urban development company. The have and are continuing to create a "utopian" community of sorts that is full of well developed areas to live, work, and play. 

Day 4
Day three was filled with two different company visits, Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) and II-VI. VSIP is an area built specifically for companies to come in and build a factory in their park and II-VI is a company located within the park. I really found II-VI very interesting because it is a chemical company where many of the semi conductors that are in everyday objects are made. We got a full tour of the factory and were able to see the whole production from start to finish.

Day 5
This was the first day that we were given a lecture on the culture of Vietnam. It was very interesting to learn about the history and the culture from the opposite point of view. We were informed briefly on everything from the very origins of the land and the native people the whole way through present day Vietnam. We were then given another language lesson in which we learned a few more short phrases and started being able to hold basic conversations. In the afternoon we visited Glass Egg Digital Media, which is a company that builds cars, environments, and other props for various video games including games produced by Mircrosoft and EA. It was fascinating learning about all of the graphic design and programming behind each and every piece they produce. 

Day 6
We spent the vast majority of the day at UEF. We were given another lecture and language class and then participated in activities with their English Club at the university. It was a really great way to get to know the students better along with the students on the trip. 

Day 7 
On Saturday we visited the Cu Chi tunnels just North of HCMC. While here we learned a great bit about the history of the tunnels from the Vietnamese perspective, which is obviously much different than how we see them. We were given a tour of the tunnels and were able to go down to see many of the bunkers used for fighting, cooking, planning, and living.