Day 9

Today was a lot like yesterday. We had a business class this morning and language class again. Then, we had a site visit to the US Commercial Service. We met with the Principal Commercial Officer (he's kind of a big deal). The US Commercial Service is a part of the International Trade Association, which is a division of the Department of Commerce. The main goal is to promote the export of US goods or services to Vietnam. He is one of about 270 Principal Commercial Officers in the world, so it was great that we were given the opportunity to hear him speak. He, like many of our other site visits, gave us his opinion on the state of the economy in Vietnam in light of the global downturn, which of course is very interesting. We just went to dinner at a place called the Hollywood Film Cafe, which is a restaurant that was opened by a Chinese American. His story is really interesting. He was born in Kansas, grew up in North Carolina, just graduated in 2006, moved to Vietnam, opened a franchise, had a few mishaps with the government (real easy to do in Vietnam), and then started this new restaurant. The restaurant was really neat, it was like a movie theatre and I got a bacon cheeseburger that was AMAZING. I didn't realize how much I miss American food. It makes me really excited to come home in a few days! :)