Friday

Last night was pretty wild…  we went to the Banh Thanh Market, which is just this huge market in the street, where you can bargain with street vendors.  I bought some ridiculous stuff, you will have to wait and see mom.  Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure its okay to take on a plane.  But that place was sweet, cause I bargained a t-shirt from 120,000 VND to 50,000.  Also, Khoa was like my personal translator/agent for getting certain things.  After that, we did the usual walk around the city.  Then we did work.

Friday we went to U.E.F. for our usual lessons.  For the afternoon we went to e town 2 for our site visit.  It was my favorite visit so far, because the speaker was very interesting.  He started the meeting by telling us his personal story, which starts when he was about nine.  The Viet Nam War was ending, and his family wanted to flee the country.  So one day his parents sent him to his uncle’s house in the Mekong Delta, yet this is very difficult because there were curfews and you were not allowed to just go on trips.  He actually did not even know what he was going for, but eventually he got on a tiny boat with his uncle, and I think about 50 others, where they had to lay down face up the entire ride to Indonesia.  He made it back to the U.S., and his mother later caught up to him.  However, his father’s boat was lost at sea.  The U.S paid for him and other refugees to fly to America, as such a ticket is very expensive.  They were sent the bill about 15 years later.  Then he went back to Viet Nam years later as an electrical engineer and had the opportunity to start a semiconductor company.  That night we just stayed inside and hung out in Anthony and Steve’s room and balcony.