My Typical Day

My day starts with going down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Usually, I choose a noodle soup. Also, Viet Nam has the most spectacular coffee. It is very thick, and it is served with sweetened condensed milk. It's amazing.

At about 7:20, I start walking with some other girls to the university. It takes us quite a while to get there because we sometimes have to wait a while at the street corners in order to get up enough nerve to cross the street.

I attend Vietnamese class from 8:00-10:00 and its one of the best parts of the day. It really feels like we're singing sometimes. We have two teachers who switch off each day. The female teacher is very graceful and poised. The male teacher speaks English with an Australian accent and he's pretty funny.

At 10:00, we attend lectures on various topics related to Vietnamese culture and development. Today, a professor lectured on the five different stages of Vietnamese urbanization. Yesterday, we attended a lecture on Confucianism.

When we are let out of class at 12:00, we eat at the canteen at the university. The first two days, the food there was a novelty, but now it's getting really old. It's very fatty and bland- like cafeteria food anywhere, I guess.

After lunch, it is extremely hot. We walk back to our hotel and sit in air-conditioning for at least a couple of hours. We have between fifty and seventy pages of reading to do each day. On top of that, I need to study my vietnamese. In addtion, I need to have a firm idea of what I would like to do my Independent Study Project on by early next week. So, I spend a good amount of time in the afternoons studying.

Otherwise, I've been walking around the city, trying new restaurants, checking out the markets, hanging out at internet cafes and hanging out with the other students.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you all a little picture of what I've been doing lately.