First Week of Classes, Life in Saigon, Tourist Activities

This weekend the entire Vietnamese contingency of our group, Vi and our roommates Loan, Trang, and Hanh, has gone to visit family so Anna and I took the opportunity to be American tourists today. We went to the Vietnamese history museum, the botanical gardens, the zoo, and the large shopping center, Diamond plaza. The history museum was very nice. It was set in a very beautiful Chinese style building and had a lot of artifact and art displays. Thanks to Professor Paterson, I was able to identify the Buddhist and Hindu imagery in the artwork and talk about the four positions of the Buddha, the objects that Vishnu holds, and the inclusion of the lotus in artwork. Introduction to Southeast Asia for the win!

Vietnamese history museum from the outside

The Hindu sculptures I was able to identify

After that, we went to the zoo and botanical gardens. The gardens had a lot of bonsai trees as well as a surprisingly large collection of cacti. I'm not usually a huge fan of zoos but this one was not bad for being in such a big city. The zoo had a large collection of animals native to Southeast Asia and Southern China with my favorite probably being the Asiatic black bear. Another cool part was that some of the monkeys didn't really have enclosures and were kind of just swinging around the trees.

Botancial Gardens

After that I had my first bành mí, a Vietnamese specialty that shows a fusion of Vietnamese with French influence. It is a baugette with pork, Vietnamese vegetables, and some type of sauce which I do not know the name of.

Me eating bành mí

Then we headed over to the Notre Dame cathedreal next to Diamond plaza and a very nice park where old people like to do calesthenics in the morning and where young people like to have coffee at night. Going into Diamond plaza was kind of a reverse culture shock after a week in Vietnam. The store has several stories of designer clothing and makeup with a Pizza Hut, KFC, bowling alley, and arcade games on the top floor.

Notre Dame with Diamond Plaza in the Background

Tonight we plan on going to place that has Vietnamese musicians singing Vietnamese and English songs called "The Acoustic Bar."

Yesterday also marked the end of my first week of classes in Vietnam and so far things have been going pretty well. Sometimes I get a little homesick or overwhelmed by speaking Vietnamese almost constantly (Friday I had three hours of one-on-one Vietnamese class, two hours of volunteering at the shelter, and a lot of Vietnamese conversation with my roommate), but overall this is turning out to be a great experience. I alternate with being very impressed with how much vocabulary I have and how much more easily I can speak with being frustrated when people can't understand my basic sentences because of my accent. Hopefully my frustration will lessen as I become more accustomed to people's natural pace of talking and the subtle (to me) differences in tones. In other news, Anna has learned more about the rooster, or, in fact, roosters, that we hear outside our window every morning. One early morning when she was taking a walk she discovered them being boiled alive in a giant pot of water. No wonder they are so loud...

Cuồi tuần này sinh viên Việt Nam, Vi và các bạn phần phòng, đi thăm gia đình nên Anna và tôi tìm hiểu Sài Gòn. Trước hết chung tôi đến bảo tàng lịch sử Việt Nam.