Friday we had a very rushed class, we learned more Vietnamese, and we started to learn how to barter to prepare for our visit to the Ben Thanh Market on Monday. After class we had a very quick lunch and headed for the US Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City.
This was a really cool visit because what is now the US Consulate used to be the US Embassy for South Vietnam before 1975. We talked to a consular officer, a political officer, an economist, and a public affairs officer about what a consulate does and how they interact with the host country. This was also preparing us for what we would do later that afternoon talking to other Vietnamese students about US schools compared to Vietnamese schools. We then got a tour of the grounds where we saw the historic sight of the attack on the US Embassy in Saigon.
From the consulate, we walked to the American Center in the Diamond Plaza where we were part of an event for Education USA, a program that the consulate has to help Vietnamese kids get into American colleges. This was really fun because the Vietnamese kids were really into it, we didnt really talk about school all that much, they were much more interested in daily life and what we do for fun in america. We stayed there for an hour and then all went back to the hotel.
At this point we split up for dinner, the girls all went shopping and the guys went out for traditional Vietnamese hot-pot. The hot-pot place was really cool, it was basically an empty warehouse type place with tables and chairs set up in the middle. We were served several goat dishes as appetizers and then they brought the hot-pots out. in the pots were all sorts of vegetables and they also gave us pig brains to put in as well, which I was very skeptical about, but it ended up being very good.
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