On Wednesday, we headed to UEF for culture class and language class! The culture class talked a lot about the yin and yang aspects of the society, such as houses facing east vs. west and how many gates are customary to have out front. It was interesting to me that the direction a house faces could influence it's value, since that doesn't happen in American real estate. I think a large difference between our culture and their culture is that the Vietnamese have so much history, whereas the United States was founded as a “melting pot” and really has very few distinctly American traditions.
Then we had language classes where we worked on learning numbers and phrases, though our favorite is "Mot Hai Ba Yo!" which is the Vietnamese version of a "1, 2, 3 cheers!" type saying. Even though Vietnam is a more sheltered or conservative country, we’ve learned that there is still a lot we have in common with the UEF students.
After lunch, we walked to the UEF administrative building, which was around the corner from the hotel. When we got there, we met with Mark Oakley, who worked for the law firm Duane Morris Viet Nam LLC. He talked about new companies coming to Vietnam and how they go about getting different permits and permissions they would need. It was interesting to me that he wouldn't comment on anything political, even in our non-public setting, as the government in the country was communist and so it's not acceptable to speak your opinion regarding politics. His talk was interesting because he is a foreigner working in Vietnam, so he had to learn a whole new culture for his job. Though he wanted to be considered a southeast Asia expert rather that a Vietnam expert, he was still very knowledgeable about both how the government in Vietnam works and how cultures of different countries can strongly affect business practices.
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