Day 7

Our dynamic and interesting professor from the university of humanities and social sciences finished his lecture about the history of Vietnam today. He talked about the yin and yang and any other symbols in the vietnamese culture. I learned how the Vietnamese feel about the members of other societies including the Chinese, U.S, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. We continued our language class learning basic conversational phrases today. "How are you?”, "How are you doing?”, and “I’m fine” have all been added to my phrase dictionary. I really wish that I would have studied Vietnamese before coming here because all of the UEF kids have been studying english for a long time.

I really enjoy learning about various companies and exploring Saigon but the best part about being here is absolutely the people I am friends with. They are so fun and friendly and they always know where to take us to have a good time. Tonight we went to a bridge in crescent (a new futuristic housing development) that is illuminated with LED’s. Its too tough to get a picture of the bridge because I do not have a camera that can properly take a picture in the dark. I am excited to do the things on the agenda each day but seeing my friends is what I most look forward to each day. Trân told me that the Vetnamese people are welcoming and friendly and I can say that this is completely true. They treat us very well and they want to be a part of our lives. I try my best each day to learn some new words and augment my personal vocabulary list. My friends always help me pronounce the words which is by far the most difficult part. I can picture exactly how to write a word in my head, but saying it is a completely different challenge.

Tonight our friends took us to Dominos pizza because several Pitt students requested some pizza for dinner. By far, this was the worst meal I have had all week. My stomach has not gotten upset with anything we have eaten so far except for the pizza. Hopefully I won’t have to eat it again. I wanted to go to the crescent mall, but it was closed by the time we got back from the colorful bridge, hopefully we will get to go another day. There is nothing quite as new and modern in America as the crescent development. It is almost like a utopia; the grounds are spotless and there are hardly any imperfections to be found.

Today for our company visit we went to Ascenx Technologies. They fill the unique niche roll of reverse engineering parts of products that are no longer in production, in addition to pro diving specialty low volume production services for companies that require unique cables. The CEO took a lot of time to explain his story of how he fled Vietnam when the communists took over and how he came back to found his own company. After this presentation he invited us to coffee and we talked about many things including how to choose who to fire and how to manage relations with shareholders.

Our days are planned so we will miss the Vietnamese rush hour, however due to the extra time we spent getting coffee, we were a little late leaving today. The traffic was notable worse then previous days. Observe!