Goodbye United States, Xin Chào Vietnam!

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City last night with a group of Loyola students and we were all greeted by our partner students outside of the airport. They helped us get a taxi and came back with us to the dormitory where we will be living, which was about a 15 minute ride.

When we got to the dormitory, we put our stuff away and they showed us around. There is a courtyard in the middle with a soccer net and basketball hoop and some sitting areas. It seems kind of strange that it is all cement and no grass. There's also a cat that wanders around, so I'll have to make sure I spend time with it. There is a cafeteria on campus but it seems like the students only eat there if it's after curfew. The curfew here is 11pm and you have to be inside the gate by then. We each have an ID we have to swipe in order to let the security guard let us through.

We went to the cafeteria last night to get something to drink. I can tell that I am kind of dehydrated because I haven't been drinking much water. They make corn milk at the cafeteria and put it into plastic bottles to sell. Maria, my partner student, says it is very good so I will have to try it sometime. I ended up just getting a bottle of water and it was 6000 dong. Although they don't recommend thinking about prices in terms of US dollars, 20,000 dong is a dollar so the water was very cheap.

Today I am meeting with Maria at 10 to go get a phone that I can use while here. It's funny because the partner students refer to them as dumb phones since it will just be a basic phone. Orientation occurs later today starting at noon and we have activities planned until Monday with classes starting Tuesday. Everything is going very well so far!