day 4

Thursday, May 10th

Today was a much more relaxed day - no company visits! It was nice to spend more time at UEF for a change. We started by learning about Vietnamese history and culture. I realized that I knew very little about these things, apart from the Vietnam War (or as they call it, the American War). For example, Vietnam had dynasties until the late 1800s. After the culture class, we had language class. We learned about their vowel sounds (they have twelve vowels, as to our six) and also how the tones affect each vowel. There are six tones, which on the letter 'a', look like this: a à ã ả á ạ. In south Vietnam, the third and fourth tones sound the same, but in the north they are different. For me, it is kind of hard to make the five different sounds - some are easy, but some are nearly impossible to get right on a regular basis. We also learned about personal pronouns (there are different ones for "I" and "you" depending on the gender and age of the person you are talking to). We also reviewed numbers and how to order phở and cà phê (soup and coffee). "Chị ơi! Một c̀a phê!"

After we were done with classes and lunch, we started playing games! First we split into teams and filled out a worksheet that helped us learn about differences in cultural norms between the United States and Vietnam. For example, Americans find it acceptable to kiss, hold hands, and hug in public, but in Vietnam it's not always okay. Even though there were a few major differences though, overall we are very similar :) Next, we did a dance off. I am an awkward dancer, so I was kind of glad that my group didn't make it past the first round. Some of the groups were really good at synchronizing though! After that, we played charades. It was hard to act out some of the words, but it was fun nonetheless! Then we played a game where one guy from each team had to spin a girl from their team around them as many times as possible. I got spun by Ricky, and I thought we did pretty well (but it did hurt a little). Next, they had a baby pig that they put in an arena made of desks turned on their sides. The goal was to catch it! I was afraid it would bite me, though, so I didn't try very hard to catch it. Then we had to compete between the teams to throw the most balls through hula hoops in a limited time, and after that, we played a game that was kind of like twister.

When the games were done, we had an awards ceremony. My team didn't win anything unfortunately :( We got a consolation prize though, and we later found out it had fruit and candy in it! The dragonfruit was delicious :) We did a gift exchange with the UEF students, and we gave them Pitt t-shirts. After that, we had a dance party and took lots of pictures.

This evening, we finally tried phở! The soup and noodles and breadstick-like thing were good, though the meat has more fat on it than in the United States. I used my ever-improving chopstick skills to cut the fat off though, and the rest of the meat was tasty. Then, we went on a joy ride on the motorbikes, which was lots of fun. We got to see the skyscrapers lit up at night! I wish I had taken pictures, but I think someone else got one (I hope).

So, this was delayed a bit - now it's time to talk about day 5!