Hello everyone! It’s been a while, and I’m sorry to keep you adoring fans waiting. It’s been a pretty wild 2 weeks. We spent another week in Saigon taking culture immersion classes/visits, taking Vietnamese Speaking Classes, and just exploring the city some more in general. On Saturday (6/25) we traveled to Quang Tri and settled down with our roommates and started working the following week. Then this past weekend we got to travel to Da Nang Bay and just relax. Here’s an overview of what’s gone on!
A Week of the City Life
In the mornings, we spent most of our time immersing ourselves in the culture. We had 2 lectures from Dr. Roberte. The first lecture was an Introduction on Vietnamese Studies, primarily focusing on post-war Vietnam and how much it has recovered.There has been huge growth in the fields of education, healthcare, and the economy. However, there are still many big problems the country faces. Some of the issues fall in the category of infrastructure, education (investment, planning, and implementation in rural areas), environmental, and climate change. The area we are currently at, Quang Tri, has no university. In fact, there are nearly zero universities out of the main areas of Saigon, Hanoi, and Hue. This severely limits the access to higher education for the students in those areas. The second was about culture differences within Vietnam, such as the divide between natural Vietnamese vs. ethnic minorities and groups of people in the highlands vs. lowlands. Some other things we did were visiting the War Remnants Museum, which was a very powerful exhibit. It was a new perspective. As Americans, we do not usually look at wars from the eyes of the opposing countries. The displays definitely came with a lot of bias, as much of the information portrayed America very negatively for their treatment of Vietnamese people and waste of resources. The most shocking thing I encountered was the use of Agent Orange gas by the US. It’s been over 40 years since the war ended, but Vietnamese people are still affected by it today. The thing is, it hasn’t only been just the Vietnamese. There has been generations of American lives that have also been mutated by the gas. It was definitely painful to view those images. I felt an intense wave of privilege just to be born in a healthy body with minimal problems. As an individual and as a group, we all took away a lot from this visit.
Most of our afternoons was spent in the Vietnamese Speaking Language (VSL) classroom. We were divided into two groups (except for Kayla since she’s actually 100% fluent) and had 3 hour lessons on “Survival Vietnamese”. In the span of a week, we learned to introduce ourselves and ask basic questions like “where are you from” and “what’s your age?”, how to order food, and how to bargain at the market. Our teacher, Dung, was so fun and her lessons were very interactive!
In our spare time, we usually went exploring Saigon or chilled out. I got to visit a Buddhist temple, go to a nightclub, and hang out with our Vietnamese buddies some more! They are dearly missed and I can’t wait to see them again before we head back to the states. Oh right before we left we got to see an Acrobatic Opera (AO) Show at the historic Saigon Opera House. It was definitely one of the most amazing shows I’ve seen! Lots of history and crazy acrobatics to boot!
A Week of the Simple Life
On Saturday (6/25) we took a flight to Hue and met our roommates at the airport. My roommates name is Bao. He’s a pretty goober-ish dude, so we get along pretty well! (I’ll post more about him later). From there, we took a bus to Quang Tri. Just from looking outside the window, we could see a drastic change from the bustling streets of an urban jungle to a much more rural and quiet area. It was much more neaturey as well too, lots more trees and there is a river right by our guesthouse. It’s very peaceful and we got to have dinner at a local restaurant and just chill with our roommates after. It was a super fun time and we played this game called Wolves, which is basically the Vietnamese version of Mafia. The next morning, we woke up and took a bike tour of the area. We biked to the two worksites, the youth center where we will be teaching, and some other helpful locations. Next, we had orientation to figure out who will work where. Me and Bao chose Luong The Vinh School since it was much more open and seemed pretty fun to work at. For the grade level we taught, we got 9th-10th graders. Bao said young kids were hard to control so he wanted to lean on the older side. That night, we got to have dinner on our guesthouse porch with the local community members and the masons we are working with.
During the week…I’ll have a post about our daily working week life coming up, promise!
A good ol’ couple Days Just Chillin
This past weekend was a 3-day weekend. I don’t think they celebrate 4th of July here….but apparently we get the day off! So of course after a long work week, we decide to take a little trip to Da Nang Bay. But before we went there, we took a group visit to the 17th parallel and the Vinh Moc Tunnels. Both are historical sites and were well worth the visit. The tunnels were extremely fascinating in particular. It’s incredible that a community flourished underground in the middle of war and really showed how much resiliency and wits the Vietnamese people had. Some villages were even up to 30 meters underground!
After a group lunch, we took a bus to Da Nang Bay. The area is a little bit on the touristy side, as there’s some big attractions and the beach. On Saturday night, we went to get Pizza Hut because why not? and visited the Dragon Bridge. It was quite an incredible show, as around 9pm the head of the dragon spews out flames, and then douses everyone in the radius of it’s mouth with water. The next day some of us woke up and saw the sunrise at around 5:20 am. It was totally worth it, even if it was a little cloudy. I immediately passed out on the beach for 2 hours after and I gotta say napping on the beach is now up there on my favorite places to nap list. We grabbed breakfast and then headed to the beach as a group and had some beach fun with the waves and volleyball. Later that afternoon/evening, we went to the the Ancient Town of Hoi An that was close to Da Nang. That was also a touristy place, but very pretty. At night, lanterns filled the streets and candles in these cute little boxes filled the water along with the boats. It was very pretty. Me, Andrew, and Nikila also did a little souvenir shopping and bought some elephant pants! I’m very psyched to wear them no matter what the haters say. Sunday we left Da Nang, but not before we went to the local market and went grocery shopping for hamburgers and other American yummies. That night, we had bacon cheeseburgers, mac n’ cheese, guacamole, and french fries. I love Vietnamese food and all, but damn was it good to have a taste of America on the 4th.
Hope you guys enjoyed reading this post! Be sure to check out some of the pictures below :)
A Week of the City Life
In the mornings, we spent most of our time immersing ourselves in the culture. We had 2 lectures from Dr. Roberte. The first lecture was an Introduction on Vietnamese Studies, primarily focusing on post-war Vietnam and how much it has recovered.There has been huge growth in the fields of education, healthcare, and the economy. However, there are still many big problems the country faces. Some of the issues fall in the category of infrastructure, education (investment, planning, and implementation in rural areas), environmental, and climate change. The area we are currently at, Quang Tri, has no university. In fact, there are nearly zero universities out of the main areas of Saigon, Hanoi, and Hue. This severely limits the access to higher education for the students in those areas. The second was about culture differences within Vietnam, such as the divide between natural Vietnamese vs. ethnic minorities and groups of people in the highlands vs. lowlands. Some other things we did were visiting the War Remnants Museum, which was a very powerful exhibit. It was a new perspective. As Americans, we do not usually look at wars from the eyes of the opposing countries. The displays definitely came with a lot of bias, as much of the information portrayed America very negatively for their treatment of Vietnamese people and waste of resources. The most shocking thing I encountered was the use of Agent Orange gas by the US. It’s been over 40 years since the war ended, but Vietnamese people are still affected by it today. The thing is, it hasn’t only been just the Vietnamese. There has been generations of American lives that have also been mutated by the gas. It was definitely painful to view those images. I felt an intense wave of privilege just to be born in a healthy body with minimal problems. As an individual and as a group, we all took away a lot from this visit.
Most of our afternoons was spent in the Vietnamese Speaking Language (VSL) classroom. We were divided into two groups (except for Kayla since she’s actually 100% fluent) and had 3 hour lessons on “Survival Vietnamese”. In the span of a week, we learned to introduce ourselves and ask basic questions like “where are you from” and “what’s your age?”, how to order food, and how to bargain at the market. Our teacher, Dung, was so fun and her lessons were very interactive!
In our spare time, we usually went exploring Saigon or chilled out. I got to visit a Buddhist temple, go to a nightclub, and hang out with our Vietnamese buddies some more! They are dearly missed and I can’t wait to see them again before we head back to the states. Oh right before we left we got to see an Acrobatic Opera (AO) Show at the historic Saigon Opera House. It was definitely one of the most amazing shows I’ve seen! Lots of history and crazy acrobatics to boot!
A Week of the Simple Life
On Saturday (6/25) we took a flight to Hue and met our roommates at the airport. My roommates name is Bao. He’s a pretty goober-ish dude, so we get along pretty well! (I’ll post more about him later). From there, we took a bus to Quang Tri. Just from looking outside the window, we could see a drastic change from the bustling streets of an urban jungle to a much more rural and quiet area. It was much more neaturey as well too, lots more trees and there is a river right by our guesthouse. It’s very peaceful and we got to have dinner at a local restaurant and just chill with our roommates after. It was a super fun time and we played this game called Wolves, which is basically the Vietnamese version of Mafia. The next morning, we woke up and took a bike tour of the area. We biked to the two worksites, the youth center where we will be teaching, and some other helpful locations. Next, we had orientation to figure out who will work where. Me and Bao chose Luong The Vinh School since it was much more open and seemed pretty fun to work at. For the grade level we taught, we got 9th-10th graders. Bao said young kids were hard to control so he wanted to lean on the older side. That night, we got to have dinner on our guesthouse porch with the local community members and the masons we are working with.
During the week…I’ll have a post about our daily working week life coming up, promise!
A good ol’ couple Days Just Chillin
This past weekend was a 3-day weekend. I don’t think they celebrate 4th of July here….but apparently we get the day off! So of course after a long work week, we decide to take a little trip to Da Nang Bay. But before we went there, we took a group visit to the 17th parallel and the Vinh Moc Tunnels. Both are historical sites and were well worth the visit. The tunnels were extremely fascinating in particular. It’s incredible that a community flourished underground in the middle of war and really showed how much resiliency and wits the Vietnamese people had. Some villages were even up to 30 meters underground!
After a group lunch, we took a bus to Da Nang Bay. The area is a little bit on the touristy side, as there’s some big attractions and the beach. On Saturday night, we went to get Pizza Hut because why not? and visited the Dragon Bridge. It was quite an incredible show, as around 9pm the head of the dragon spews out flames, and then douses everyone in the radius of it’s mouth with water. The next day some of us woke up and saw the sunrise at around 5:20 am. It was totally worth it, even if it was a little cloudy. I immediately passed out on the beach for 2 hours after and I gotta say napping on the beach is now up there on my favorite places to nap list. We grabbed breakfast and then headed to the beach as a group and had some beach fun with the waves and volleyball. Later that afternoon/evening, we went to the the Ancient Town of Hoi An that was close to Da Nang. That was also a touristy place, but very pretty. At night, lanterns filled the streets and candles in these cute little boxes filled the water along with the boats. It was very pretty. Me, Andrew, and Nikila also did a little souvenir shopping and bought some elephant pants! I’m very psyched to wear them no matter what the haters say. Sunday we left Da Nang, but not before we went to the local market and went grocery shopping for hamburgers and other American yummies. That night, we had bacon cheeseburgers, mac n’ cheese, guacamole, and french fries. I love Vietnamese food and all, but damn was it good to have a taste of America on the 4th.
Hope you guys enjoyed reading this post! Be sure to check out some of the pictures below :)