So far on this trip I have eaten the same thing for breakfast every morning, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. A bowl of pho, eggs, and coffee will never get old.
After breakfast this morning we headed to Vina capital for our third site visit. Vina capital is a non governmental organization that specializes in the health and wellbeing of women and children in Vietnam. One story that Mr. Kivette talked about that really struck me was the reasons behind the girls clubs they started for girls in rural Vietnam. Issues that are present in rural Vietnam are deeply rooted in their culture, which makes solving them very difficult. They cannot just change the culture overnight, and they face pushback from people living there even though they are just helping. By having girls clubs, they are able to educate girls and hopefully provide them with a better future, and therefore are able to potentially strengthen the Vietnamese middle class. These girls clubs are found all over the United States, however in the U.S there are also boys clubs, which I think would also be beneficial in Vietnam. Mr. Kivette briefly touched on this idea, but I would like to learn more about how they would implement them and get boys across Vietnam to join. This way they would also be able to educate the boys to not act in ways that are harmful to the development of Vietnamese girls.
After the site visit, we went to lunch and I had my second bowl of pho of the day. Then after lunch we went to UEF to continue our language classes. We also had a brief culture and history lesson where we learned about ancient myths of Vietnam, which was very interesting. The Vietnamese believe that there was an earth god and a water god who fought over a princess, and the earth god won which is why they have a bad rainy season every year. We also painted traditional conical hats which was very fun.
Next, we went to the river for the water bus tour. During the tour, we were able to see the city from a new point of view, and we stopped at a street market type of place to walk around for a little before getting the bus back. While we were walking around, me and some friends found a ping pong club and we played ping pong for a little bit, then got some food. I asked Jermaine, one of the UEF students what to eat, and I got a Vietnamese taco thing. It was a rice paper tortilla with shrimp, scallions, beef sausage, and other things in it. Overall today was a very good day, and I really enjoyed the Vina Capital visit because it was so different from the other two we have been. I also really enjoyed Mr. Kivette. He seemed very genuine and passionate about what he does, and the Vina Capital story is very touching.
