Anti-China sentiments are starting to boil over in Ho Chi Minh today--we got an alert from the US State Dept to avoid any (even peaceful) demonstrations. This threw a sort of wrench in a few of our plans. We were to visit another industrial park today and an on-site noodle factory, but the entrance was clogged by protestors mobbing the Chinese-backed factories of the park. This allowed us to have the afternoon off... but I wanted to visit the Reunification Palace and go inside Notre Dame and these were key places where people were most likely to gather. In our third and final culture lecture, the professor was very profuse in denouncing China's actions and displaying the strong nationalism shared by basically all the Vietnamese.
It was our last day at UEF--I've really enjoyed hanging out with the students inside and outside of class. We have our final meeting tomorrow on the soccer field! Ms. Tuyet had more group games for us today... This time we actually had to spell phrases out, which was super hard because the accents, dots, and vowels with symbols are really hard to remember. There are 12 vowels and 5 tones in Vietnamese (each with its own symbol) as opposed to English's 5 vowels. It's tough. But language class overall was very fun!
Since it's super hot, after lunch we got some ice cream. We also did some last minute souvenir shopping at Ben Thanh Market. I'm so sad to be leaving so soon. I'm not prepared to go back to real life...
No comments:
Post a Comment