Day 4 and 5--I think...

Professional: Yesterday's class went well for the most part. In the afternoon, we divided the students into 2 groups. My group went to an upstairs classroom. The air conditioner was turned on but was apparently on fan not AC. We all had sweat pouring down our faces. Even my VN students who are accustomed to this heat were not tolerating it well at all. Our brains finally ceased functioning and we had to return to the downstairs, moderately cool classroom. Today, we turned the AC on upstairs a full 2 hours before we planned to use the classroom. This worked much better. It is important to remember that the environment impacts the ability to learn!!

We covered concept analysis today and then did some exercises to help the students understand the process. I have been reading through my students' concepts. Some are a little too broad for the purposes of this course and this assignment. These students took the Master's level research class just before this course. We are having some trouble helping them find a concept related to their research ideas that is amenable to a concept analysis in a few days rather than a few years! Dr. Kay asked them to bring their research hypotheses and research questions to class tomorrow. The students will work in pairs for this concept analysis assignment and with the same person for their theory development assignment. We will meet with each pair of students tomorrow with high hopes that we can get them on the right path! :>)
Personal: Yesterday a group of students took us + the two UMP faculty members to lunch at a restaurant in a hotel. They said it was very famous in HCM City. The food was wonderful. However, I could not make myself try the black snails in spite of encouragement from my students.

Today Kay and I were invited by the Dean to a lunch celebration of the International Day of the Woman. There was a lovely ceremony with wine toasts in beautiful small crystal glasses. Some attendees has 7 Up or Pepsi in cups. We are not sure why some got wine and some not. We were presented with a gift from the Dean--a beautiful wooden figure of a Vietnamese woman. For dessert there was a very moist cake + grapes and Vietnamese pears. These are very red--they look almost like apples. They are very good--crisp and juicy. After I took a bite of mine, a look of horror came over the face of our host. She said, "Oh, no, no!" and took the fruit from my hand. When I looked where I had taken a bite, there was a cluster of small black gnat-like bugs some of which I had just swallowed. I fervently hope they are not a bug that is the host to some type of parasite!!

After I returned from our afternoon classes, I washed some clothes out in the sink. Something literally dyed my fingernails a purple color. I saw a nail shop down the street so I plan to see what they can do to fix this problem. I still have no phone and Verizon does not seem to be doing much if anything to fix the problem.
Kay & I had dinner at a roof top terrace in a hotel across the street. The terrace was lovely with views of the city. I am having trouble uploading pictures tonight so will add more pictures tomorrow.