Another jam packed day in Vietnam! We started off with breakfast at the hotel (like every other day). Once again the food was delicious! (They had these cute little pork sausage thinggys that tasted like hot dogs. Real classy). We then loaded the bus and headed to UEF. The bus was SOOO HOT!!! Literally everyone was just in a pool of sweat. (Again, real classy with our business casual clothes on).
In the morning we had a lecture about the history, culture and economics of the Mekong Delta. It was really interesting, just slightly on the long side! It was also slightly difficult to understand Professor Le Quang Minh. However, I did not know that shrimp production is dangerous to the environment and pollutes the water with over 200 chemicals. The professor said that the government is trying to regulate this contamination and provide subsidies to those who abide by the regulations. They are trying to use more biochemicals such as algae to act as a natural water filter in order to decrease the amount of toxins.
Next we had language class where we learned numbers and how to count to 20. The tones are so hard! I thought I knew what I was doing but when the teacher came to me to recite it out loud, she corrected every single number. (Whoops, looks like my dream career of announcing the lottery numbers in Vietnam is over). She said that tomorrow we are going to learn how to bargain for when we go to the market. She said that we should haggle them down to at least half (that should be interesting). After class we went to lunch at the usual place. They had fried shrimp which was AMAZING. We even got to see a bunch of people catch shrimp from the pond. (I didn't realize how huge and scary they are! The shrimp not the people).
Around 2:00 pm we left for Glass Egg Digital Media. Now this place was awesome!!! Even better then what I thought when I researched them prior to visiting. Glass Egg is an outsourcing game developer and art production facility. They mainly create the cars in racing games and some levels. Their clients include Microsoft, EA games, Kuju and Ubisoft. Their office is set up really cool! There is a wide open floor plan and it doesn't have the stuffy little cubicles. Also, when designing the characters and cars, the artists have this mouse pad with an electronic sketch pad that hooks up to the computer so they are able to draw it on the computer. Pretty awesome right? The presenters were the head hanchos in the company so it was very generous that they took time out of their schedule to meet with us and give us a tour. When the presentation was over, 2 of the 3 owners said that they also have another investment project: a night club. They told us that tomorrow night (Friday), they reserved us a table to come and hang out. This should be interesting considering I've never to to one....
Around 6:30 about 15 UEF students picked all of us Pitt students up and went to a karaoke bar. This was SOOOOO FUN!!! (Apparently Celine Dion and Mariah Carey are the go tos in Vietnam). I told a few of the students early on that I liked Nicki Minaj and sure enough they forced me to sing 'Star ships'. I think everyone had a good time. Around 10:00 pm we finally got dinner! By that time a lot of people had already left so ended up going to Tokyo town (which is right down the street) for Japanese food. It was really good!! (But I don't know if it was good because it actually was tasty or because I was just so hungry!) We got back to the hotel just before midnight!
So yeah another busy day down and I'm sure there will be more to come!
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