Day 2:

Not too many pictures to share today, because it was basically a travel / work day for the team. We spent the morning on a long, peaceful drive from Danang to Hue (3.5 hours) and experienced Vietnam’s natural beauty including tall hills, wide lakes, and long rivers. We also saw some small towns and a few farms growing various grains and rice. From that description, I guess it could sound like I am describing parts of Texas or even the Midwest…until you see how beautiful and GREEN the land is here:

Upon arriving to Hue, we took a short walk around the city in search of food. We chose a restaurant that served foods of a variety of cultures including American, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indian. After having had a somewhat upset stomach the night before, I opted to order spaghetti with pomodoro sauce and was pleasantly surprised with the taste and comfort of familiar food =)

After lunch we spent the next few hours discussing the logistics for our first week at work! I won’t bore you with the details…and will instead just skip over to the exciting part – our translators! We spent an hour with 7 different translators – all within 5 years of my age – talking about our backgrounds, the things we like to do in our free time, and of course, a little about our projects. My team was matched with the youngest translator…who had spent a year in an exchange program at The University of Texas at Austin! After obnoxiously flashing Longhorn signs around the conference room and yelling Hook em’ Horns to the team, we actually did some work =) We ended the day with a delicious Vietnamese dinner and came back to prepare our notes for our meetings with our clients tomorrow.

The full team + translators at dinner

Also, my team has graciously put me in charge of the IBM History portion of our kick off meeting tomorrow. I probably should start researching and memorizing some information for that…so, until tomorrow, good night!

What starts here changes the world.