Last night we had authentic sushi at a Japanese restaurant, it was phenomenal. Today was more of a relaxed one with very little time constraints. The schedule was language class , a city tour, and then china town. To start off the day was I would say eye opening. We were exposed to some majors cultural differences and lifestyles. I will talk more extensively about it further down. Language class was good ol language class. It Wes held at a different UEF location. Less kids joined us in class. I was wondering if the way our teacher teaches is a cultural thing or just because it is supposed to be a fun class. She is so energetic, she gets everyone involved and I would say the classroom environment is not only pumped up but ,cub different than what we are used to. If the other classes are like hers, I can see why they're literacy proficiency is very high. She asks everyone individually to practice and has a PowerPoint up plus the notebook so we get take notes. She guides us through everything starting off slow and picking the pace up so we practice more and more which I think is more efficient. Like I said, I'm not sure if the other classes are always like it. Next we visited the reunified palace. I loved this stop in the tour because it really was like a palace, very majestic everywhere. The grounds were kept so clean with a tennis court and lots of landscape. They also built it to feel like your royal when inside. The ceilings are massive and most of the ground is marble and the pillars are too. There are huge rooms which we didn't get to know about but it always awesome to see. There were four levels and at the top you can see lots of HCMC, you feel like a king or president when overlooking the city on top of the palace. Some neat notable things in the palace included a private helicopter pad, a gorgeous fountain, huge amazing meeting rooms, a private gambling room, and a theatre. We saw the gate where the viet cong barged through with a tank and told south Vietnam that Vietnam is there's, some awesome historical views. We also walked around the post office and were going to go to the cathedral but it was closed. After the tour, we ate lunch and chilled at the hotel.
Okay so now to the most interesting part of the day, we drove to Chinatown and went to the market there, we were supposed to eat there but we finished faster so we didn't. Markets in Asia are extremely small areas filled with overstocked goods and an endless amount of people. There is almost no place to walk. I do not want to disrespect the markets because this is there culture but between the cleanliness and smell p, it was hard to be in there long. The perspective that one gets out of the market is great to have. As an American, it is hard to understand that people can live and work in such filth and with little resources. The area was relatively poor with lots of people not wearing shoes, others eating food from the ground, many old people asking for money, and lots of other things that made me appreciate where I am from and how I need to be thankful. I saw a man with no legs and he was using a cane to move around, I felt so bad and it made me so upset to see that the healthcare system here can not provide him a wheelchair like America would have. These people are staring at us Americans, but there could be many reasons for this. First, we are white, we are also wealthier, and we looked a bit uncomfortable as we were shuffling around sleeping bodies and inhaling a lot of exhaust from the motorcycles. I was tired there and uncomfortable but I was glad that I was able to experience how am Asian market is and how some of these people live on a day to day basis. I hope one day I can help them. So when I say today was difficult, it was emotionally and physically, there was a good amount of walking and tons of heat.
Fun fact of the day: Corey has beautiful chest hair
Good post!
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