Ho Chi Minh City Skyline

Ho Chi Minh City Skyline
Ho Chi Minh City Skyline

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Post #1

Welcome to my blog, the purpose of which is to function as a travel journal for my two week study abroad experience in Vietnam. I will be traveling to Ho Chi Minh City and studying at the University of Economics and Finance (UEF). Higher education in Vietnam is controlled mostly by the government, however UEF is one of a few private universities in the entire country. The UEF Website can be found here, it is in Vietnamese and I recommend using Google Chrome's translation feature to translate the site to English.

There are several unique features of my blog that I would like to draw attention to. The picture captioned "Ho Chi Minh City skyline" is in fact the skyline of my temporary urban residence while in Vietnam. This blog's "favicon" (the little image displayed in/near the address bar) is the flag of Vietnam, referred to in the native tongue as Cờ đỏ sao vàng. This phrase literally translates to "red flag with a yellow star"; the red background is shared with many other communist nations and the yellow star symbolizes the citizens' quest for unity through socialism. The sidebar on the right side of the page includes relevant links and a link to my Blogger profile (which doesn't have much information). Lastly I have included a weather gadget that displays a small visual of the city along with the current time and temperature. The visual is quite intricate and changes depending on the time of day. The time difference is +12 hours normally, but due to daylight savings time the current difference is +11 hours.

I hope you enjoy reading my travel journal and learning about Vietnam, I am excited to have this opportunity and I plan to make the most of it.