Tuesday (05-15-2012)

This morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then went to UEF to have our classes.  We had culture class first and then we had our language class.  After this we had lunch at the university and we had French fries, rice, beef, pork, and rice rolls with mushrooms.  After lunch we drove over to Glass Egg Digital Media which is a video game design company.  They have designed most cars in popular car games and are working on an online RPG called Crystal Saga.  It was very interesting to see everybody working on designing models on their computers and to learn how their process works.  After the presentation we were all invited to come to Lush later that night for ladies night since Glass Egg is one of the partners who own Lush.

After the presentation we came back to the hotel to relax a little before we went out to dinner with the UEF students.  The UEF students have been so kind to us and have given up so much of their time to show us around and we are all really appreciative of them.  We know we couldn’t have as great of an experience here in Vietnam without everything they have done for us.  For dinner we decided to try some street vendor food o most of us got chicken and rice.  After dinner we all went to New York Dessert Cafe and I had tiramisu.  Then we went to a big mall that was close by and walked around a while.  I am now in the hotel and we will be leaving for lush in a little bit.

A few things I have noticed that are different in Vietnam during my trip here are:

• Most restaurants don’t have napkins or if they do they are extremely tiny which is very different from the US.
• They also do not have paper towels in any of the bathrooms, instead they have another roll of toilet paper for you to dry your hands on which makes it difficult.
• There is chili sauce everywhere; the UEF students even put it on their pizza.  I would say it compares to ketchup for us.  
• There are many more people who sit around outside as opposed to the US where many people just stay inside most of the time.
• I already discussed this but the traffic here is very different.  There are no regulations so everyone goes wherever they want but the traffic is slower.  This is very interesting with all of the motor bikes because whenever you cross the street nobody stops for you they just drive around you and it can be scary for the first time you do it.