Day 6: First Day of School

Today was the first day of classes! After I had another non-traditional breakfast of leftover pizza, I caught a cab with some other Loyolans to head off to Open University, where we will be taking classes. I only have one class on Tuesdays which is my sociology class and it goes from 10am to 12:30. We didn't do a whole lot today but instead talked about why we chose Vietnam and what we thought about it before we came here.

After class, we met with some of the partner students and they took us to a restaurant called -18° Celsius where I had seafood fried rice and a peach cream tea. It was good, but a little expensive at 59,000d. We had to take our shoes off before we could enter the room and we sat on the ground at very small tables. (Before we headed off to lunch, I was walking around and a student called me over. Unsure if I knew them or not, I headed over, only to find out that this student's girlfriend is a partner and simply told him there was a tall girl from the US whose name is Ashley. Well, he found me!) After lunch, we hopped back in a taxi to head to the dormitory.

Tori, me, Cate, and Summer at the restaurant.

I ended up having to download a VPN for my computer because my email and other website were continually blocked. While I'm a little nervous about that, I also don't want to come back to the states and have to go through 2,000 emails. Since the VPN hides what country your computer is currently located in, Google and Facebook no longer have Vietnamese on them.

After a few hours to ourselves to do with as we pleased, we went to DRD which is where our service learning will take place every Tuesday and Thursday. As part of our sociology class, we have to do a minimum of 38 hours of work with the organization. DRD is an organization that focuses on helping Vietnamese with disabilities find a way to "fit in" to society. DRD is based on building social relationships for these people and finding ways to help them contribute to society. They have English classes so the people can learn our language and we will help in these classes since they can learn English better by speaking to native speakers. There was no class tonight, but we played games to get to know the people and then had finger food and the chance to talk to them. Just like every other Vietnamese I have met, they asked how tall I was and if I play basketball. They also asked for a few of our phone numbers so that we can come along sometime when they go out on Sundays. After the socializing was over, I went with some of the students who were still hungry to a street vendor where they were able to get a bowl of noodles for 20,000d.

We finally have some trips planned for our free weekends here. It sounds like we will be headed off to Dalat and possibly Thailand for Bangkok. Of course, these trips are optional because it is our weekend to do with as we please and would cost extra money, but they all sound like a great time.

Some more information about the dorms we are living in: There are three of us to a room with our own bathroom, mini fridge, TV, and desks. The rooms get cleaned and sheets cleaned twice a week, which is a great deal and means less work for us. Each room has its own Wi-Fi, so the connection is much better than I expected. If we have laundry, we can pay to have somebody wash, dry, and fold it. There is no glass on the windows in the bathroom, just metal blinds, so we found lizards one night on the ceiling!