Vietnam- WE went to prison!

Today was more of a relaxed, but very eductaional day. We started off the day by visting our first Vinschool. VinGroup is a big franchise in Vietnam. They have land and living complexes and own convenience stores as well. All over Vietnam, they have created living communities for people to live in. These living communities consist of a hospital, a school, pools, shopping stores, a mall, a gym and many, many apartment buildings. It seemed to me that the kinds of people living in these communities had quite a bit of money, for the school inside the Vin community, called Vinschool, was very prestigious. The classrooms were well furnished and equipped, and the uniformed students were very kind. I found this Vin community, that runs on a set group of values and standards, to be very intriguing. The concept is like nothing I had ever heard of before and I thought about its practicality and whether or not it would work/ improve America if implemented overseas. After being welcomed and fed at the school, in a cafeteria that serves fresh, delicious food and uses stainless steel trays, bowls and utensils, (hint hint America), we headed to the Hoa Lo prison. This prison in Hanoi was used for two different kinds of people at two different periods in the history of Vietnam. For personal and safety reasons, I will talk about this in another post once I return home.

After our great tour of the prison, we headed out to the streets of Hanoi once again and shopped a bit. There are a lot of fake designer things here, similar to Chinatown, but honestly here there are cheaper and better brands. The rest of the night was quite relaxing. I got food with some of my friends, and then we had our last dinner with our host family. It was a sad last night, we sang some songs with our sisters and went out to the supermarket to get some ice cream. I really enjoyed staying with this host family. They were so kind to us and so eager to show us all Vietnam has to offer. They will be greatly missed.

-ECM