The Coherent site visit was probably the most important company across the globe that we’ve visited yet, and we didn’t even know. Coherent is a company that utilizes powerful and precise light tools as well as normal operations to create things that are integral to modern life. Some products and services they focus on include, industrial lasers, optical components, semiconductor materials, communications equipment, and medical and scientific instruments. Overall, because of the fact that Coherent makes $5 billion a year and people barely know of them, they seem like a very humble and hardworking group of people. During the tour of the factory, every worker seemed very focused and zoned in, even the financial people, and it was impressive to see how hard working everyone was. It was also cool to see the supply chain of the whole company because there were so many different sectors in the 4 different buildings and it showed how big of a project it is to make something small. So much was going into everything and some people had the smallest jobs but even the most seemingly unimportant jobs would lead to something much bigger.

My other favorite part of the day were the soccer games. Since I’ve played soccer my whole life, I was excited to see how it would be against the team at UEF, and also because I haven’t played in such a long time. Also, there was some Vietnamese freestyler and he told us that he was 5th in the world for soccer free styling. We played our game and I’m pretty sure we ended up winning or drawing, but either way the game was really fun. It was also super hot since it was inside but it was good to get in some more physical activity while we were here. We also got to do another game where we had to do 3 different sequence of events and it was 2 teams of 10, and it was timed to see which team went faster, but we never ended up knowing who won. But in the end, everyone got a medal and it was a really fun time hanging out with the UEF students and playing against the soccer team.