Life is Good

So I feel like I should update everybody on my life events. Sorry I’ve been completely out of touch…I’m rarely online these days, except for at work. As far as what I’ve been up to, I’ll start with my life presently.

Life in Vietnam:
I actually live on the outer edges of Saigon, not more than 15 or 20 kilometers from the very center of the city. I live in my 104 year old grandma’s house. My grandma’s pretty weak these days…she lies down all day and I’m pretty sure she has no clue who I am or that I even live in the house. I’m always surrounded by family and always going to visit or have dinner with one family member or another…my aunts are practically at my beck and call. It’s nice but can be a bit suffocating because I’m not used to it and feel like I’m burdening them (though they disagree)…good thing I go to work where no one bothers me. Anyways, a lot of random men hit on me through my tour de Asia so I ended up buying a wedding band to wear so that I’m not bothered by strange men, though I doubt anybody believes I’m actually married.

Okay, so I can’t stress enough how many people there are in Vietnam. In a country that’s probably half the size of California, there are 85 million people currently residing in Vietnam. The roads are crazy dangerous…there are motorists everywhere and nobody drives normally. I feel like I’m in New York City, except way worse. A lot of times, I ride on a “xe om,” a mini-motorcycle, literal translation is “hugging car,” because you have to hug people when you ride one. Haha. When crossing any road…you pretty much have to put your life in others’ hands and hope that they stop (read yield) for you to cross. Aside from the massive amounts of people in Saigon, it’s a pretty cool city. Pretty much anything I want or could need is in Saigon…there’s even a Notre Dame Cathedral built by the French that looks almost exactly like the one I visited not too long ago in Paris. I haven’t been into it because it only opens during Sunday mass.

Okay, so I lead a pretty good life in Vietnam and am even considering working here for a few years? The only thing that kills me is the insane humidity and heat and the fact that there’s practically zero air conditioning.

Working for Coca-Cola Vietnam:
As far as my project for the summer and the workplace…I’m loving it! I really enjoy working here; people don’t seem to work as much and are super friendly and joke a lot. To give you an example, the CFO of Coke Vietnam one day told me I dressed sexy that day and talks with me about fashion all the time. Another day, during snack time, my boss told me to bring the snacks to the big boss to win over his support to see what I would do. It’s also pretty relaxing to work here, though I think I came during a slow season. Three days a week, we have snack time at 4p.m. and hang out and chat for at least half an hour. Every day after lunch, you go to brush your teeth together and chat in the restroom for at least 15 minutes. Work starts at 8:30 a.m. but nobody actually shows up at that time. I leave at 5p.m. even though work doesn’t technically end until 5:30p.m. I’ve gotta admit, this work-style is winning me over.

In regards to what I actually do everyday other than goof around…my project is really cool and totally up my alley. It’s about Coke’s “Water Neutrality” initiative where Coke wants to return the community the amount of water it uses. It returns the water by providing the money to build water pipes and such in order for the poor to have access to clean water. My project deals with assessing last year’s results on these projects (how much water we have actually returned) and with writing a proposal to request $ for next year’s projects. In doing this, I will be visiting these poor communities throughout Vietnam and even in Cambodia to talk with local NGOs and visit the worksites myself and maybe even follow the NGOs on surveying the sites. So that’s my life presently…I’d upload some pictures but my sister successfully destroyed my camera along with the memory card with over a thousand pictures from Asia that had not been uploaded onto my computer by dropping the camera at the waterpark.

I have a ton of interesting stories from Asia but I’ll wait to write them another time.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July and is enjoying his/her summer!