May 10 Wednesday

Our first stop on our trip to Vietnam was the United States Embassy. After trading our passport for a visitor badge, we were greeted by their public affairs specialist, Kate Bartlett. She told us that the multipurpose room that we were in was used by three different Secretary of States. Through her job, Kate was able to meet President Obama and President Trump when they visited Vietnam.

The place across the hall is called the American Center. It is filled with educational books to help people learn about America. It also had college prep books like ones for the ACT or SAT. It also had an area to study or work or use technology like the 3D printer. This area is available for anyone to use, but its purpose is to help Vietnamese people prepare to live, work, or get an education in the United States. She had told us that Vietnam is 5^th in the world for students on U.S. campuses with over 25,000 exchange students.

Later on, we heard from a panel that had Camron, the embassy spokesperson, Ralph, the head of Foreign Agriculture Services, and two representatives from Fulbright. Some of the things Ralph does apart of his job is trade policy and market access, quarantine work, reporting issues, marketing, and capacity building. Part of his job is helping American businesses gain access to Vietnamese markets. What this entails is figuring out how the product should be marketed and packaged. “American sized bag of chips could feed a family, American’s family sized packages could be used in restaurants and served in smaller portions. It is good for the producer to know how their product is going to be used.”

            Next, we visited the Vietnam University of Agriculture. This university is almost double the size of SDSU in regard to student population. We were able to sit and converse with students from the university for about 20 minutes. Some of the students were from Cambodia and some were from Vietnam. It was interesting to learn about their different hobbies and what their school days look like. Some of the things discussed were American celebrity drama and gossip. We discussed different song genres we enjoy. One of the guys we chatted with told us all about how he loves American rap. A few of the people we conversed with also really enjoy Taylor Swift. After this, we watched an informational meeting regarding the University and then Dr. Thaler gave an informational presentation about SDSU. After learning about the two Universities, we broke into smaller groups, and went on a student-run tour around the campus. After touring the campus, we had some downtime before supper. This allowed the students to converse more and then were given the opportunity to ride mopeds and motor bikes that were owned by the students. The VNUA students gave multiple SDSU students rides around the block on their mopeds. We ended the night with a large banquet with the VNUA students and faculty. Here we enjoyed many different dishes and even learned different cheers that the Vietnamese use when toasting.