As most of you know, I found out about Vietnam right before I began studying for finals. This means I put pretty much zero thought into the fact that I was going to be in a foreign country for 6 weeks where I really had absolutely no point of reference in the language and knew no one. Everyone would ask me if I was nervous and I thought, "no way, just excited!" I might have been wrong to not be at least a little nervous. Because, as you've already read about, I went to DaNang and Hoi An right after I arrived in HCMC, I didn't really feel alone....quite yet. As the next week went by, I realized I had no friends, no one to travel with, eat with, shop with, get my cheap mani/pedis with. I'm not saying that I am Ms. Popular, however I've been known to have a friend or two under normal circumstances. HCMC was different. I didn't even know how to go about making friends because even if I learned to say "hello" in Vietnamese, that would be the extent of my conversational skills, and back I'd be at square one. As with all things, it got better. I began to meet some people at work. My vegetarian friend Joey from West Virginia became a good lunch buddy, Mimi from the VinaCapital Foundation showed me a great yoga studio (which I am now a proud member of), but finally Thao introduced me to my new travel buddy, another American law intern, Sara.
