Today started out as most did: with a culture class followed by a language class. What made this different was the thought of our impending departure. We knew it was coming, but we didn’t think it would come this fast. Our last culture lecture focused on more of the important animals the Vietnamese worship as well as fertility worship—both for husband and wife and for the farmlands. Then we had a language class test! First we had to pick four questions to ask a partner and respond to these questions appropriately. Most people had partners, but due to our group’s odd size I had to respond to questions from the teacher! Then we had a few minutes to prepare a short presentation where we say hello to everyone, introduce ourselves, and say a few things about ourselves such as where we’re from and what we’re studying in school. The way Vietnamese grades work is 10 is the best and 1 is the worst. My grade was a 9 and no one scored below an 8!
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| Me hanging out in class |
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| Alex, Steve, Ms. Tuyet, and I |
After our final delicious lunch at the canteen we had some activities with the English Exchange Club at UEF. We split up into teams and played lots of silly games like walking a balloon across the room between two people’s backs. We also had a game where you had the name of a fruit. Next you were blindfolded and had to find this fruit on a large string and eat it (so if you had watermelon you had to smell, lick, or bite whatever fruit you found near you to determine if it was the right fruit). Some were more successful than others. One of the more interesting games was having two blindfolded people feed another yogurt. This was quite messy and made for some good laughs. We then spent at least 30 minutes just walking around the room taking pictures with some of the UEF students.
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| The blindfolded fruit finding game |
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| Blindfolded people feeding others yogurt |
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| Thương, my Vietnamese language partner, and I |
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| Tin and Tom |
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| Khuong and I |
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| Tuan and I |
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| Ngoc and I |
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| making a heart! |
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| Tin! |
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| Lizzie and I |
Next came the much anticipated soccer match between University of Pittsburgh Plus 3 and the students of the University of Economics and Finance. We started out strong, but we still lost (5 to 3 I think?). What was really cool was seeing the large amount of people in Ho Chi Minh City stop on their motorbikes and watch this game between the Americans and the Vietnamese.
We then went back into the locker room…err, hotel, to freshen up for our farewell dinner. It was very sad, but also another excellent meal. Tin, Anh, and our language teacher were all there too!
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| Jake, Matt and I, ready for dinner! |
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| Anh and I |
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| Ms. Tuyet and I |
After dinner we went back and finished packing so we could leave for the airport at 3:40 AM. It was depressing, but it was nice seeing Tuan, Khuong, and Hue for just a few more minutes (thank you guys so much for coming to see us leave!). Everyone had to fight tears at this sad departure.
Well, that’s the trip…my next post should be from my home in Harrisburg, PA.
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