I was absent from blogging such a long time. I admit I was a little lazy, but there also wasn’t much to report about.
I started my internship in Vietnam the week before Chinese New Year and now I’ve been working for a month here. I got used to my work, which is a mix of translation work and works on current projects (meetings with public authorities and partners — after one meeting at the Ministry of Science and Technology I met my cousin at the entrance, until that day I didn’t know that he was working there ^^). There will be a trade fair in March and then we’ll be very busy here consulting and accompanying all the seven companies from Germany.
My colleagues are very nice and also my boss, but that’s no big deal, because we know each other for forever. There’re mostly girls here, so the topics we’re discussing are mostly love related ^^…that’s not really my favorite, but it’s definitely a nice change from the talks in TUM with all the guys around.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I give extra lessons in German, also at the company, which also works as a medium for students who want to go to Germany for their studies.
So you can see that I don’t have much free time (working from 8 am to 5 pm everyday, classes are from 6 pm to 8.30 pm). That’s why I’m using my lunch break to write this entry. I’m absolutely not used to sleep during lunch break.
Moritz works in another company, which writes software for scanning systems which recognizes what is scanned and digitalizes the documents (I don’t know if you got what they’re doing, it also took me a while to understand, but explaining it to others is another thing.) After work he usually picks me up, it’s good that he’s so good with driving in Hanoi now. We want to go out more in the next days. Then maybe I have more to report to you. See ya.
After several days of non-paid internship and driving around by taxi we were desperate to get around ourselves. So we asked some members of my family to teach Moritz how to ride a motorbike. Unfortunately, everybody said: “Yes, of course! In the next days, when I have time.” So it wasn’t helpful at all to get such an answer.
But then on Monday, my aunt said: “Let Moritz practise how to dry run first and then my uncle told him how to shift gears and then he practised while the bike was parked. The next step was to drive along the narrow way to the gate. After he got used to it my uncle decided that the whole family was going to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, so that Moritz could drive around there where he had more space. There he drove several circles until a policeman came and told us that the practise time was over and that we had to leave. That evening Moritz drove me home himself. The streets weren’t too crowded and we got home safely. The next evenings we went to the mausoleum again to practise. Here you can see a video from one of the sessions ^^…
After three days we decided to go by motorbike to work and it went out well. Moritz is quite good now and we can get around ourselves without arguing with taxi drivers or waiting for somebody to drive us around.
After a long time of blogging absence I’m back online and today I found some time to write something about what happened the last days…or should I say the last week?
Moritz and I arrived at Vietnam on December 25th. We were picked up from my father and my cousin.
After that I spent a night at my grand-parents’ house while Moritz and my father went to Hanoi.
On December 27th Ralf — a fellow student from Munich — arrived and we showed him around.
On the next day we went to Ha Long Bay, one of the most beautiful sights in Vietnam. Unfortunately, it was winter, so we had bad luck with the weather. It was rainy, foggy and cold — really not the optimal weather to be at the sea and besides of that we couldn’t go to the caves. But we found a ship which took us out to the sea and we could admire the landscape and took some pictures.
My father in the meanwhile had lot’s of fun with his old mates from Germany, they drank and ate the whole time while we were visiting the bay. But we had fun, too. We didn’t see Thomas for a long time and it was our first trip together.
The following days we did sight-seeing in Hanoi. On New Year’s Eve we went to the Sword Lake (centre of the city) and it was so crowded that you had to walk on the road between cars and motobikes. The funniest part was that, because of his height Ralf was one “attraction” among the Vietnamese people. Everybody looked up and estimated how big he was. Some girls wanted to say something, but while they were practising their text, we went away ><..
And slowly the new year arrived and because we were watching lanterns flying into the sky (or staying stucked in trees ^^) we missed midnight by three minutes. And Ralf went into the new year six hours before his parents in Germany =)
Our plan was to go to Sapa (city in the mountains) for two days during the weekend, but then one of us got sick and we had to cancel it. Instead we took a break and went to some places near Hanoi, for example the pottery village Bat Trang. There we found really nice bowls, plates, tea sets and much more. Too bad, that I don’t have an appartment yet -.-
Tomorrow, we’ll start our Da Nang — Hoi An — Hue — Phong Nha trip. Then I’ll write more. See ya.
