United States Physics Team Blog (AAPT)

hokay, so, here's the Earth, and we are halfway across it. most of us are pretty exhausted right now, and the only thing that we can possibly concentrate on is commenting on the contents of this post. the vietnam experience has been great so far: our hotel rooms are comfortable, the food is more than edible, and our exposure to the vietnamese culture can be put simply as "adventurous." On our first day here, we discovered that the streets did not have designated pedestritan cross times. in other words, people who've made the unfortunate decision to tour on foot have to weave through the continuous traffic of motorcycles, cars, and buses, much like a virtual reality version of frogger --- minus the virtual part. (Rui has made some efforts to record the near-fatal process so you readers out there will have a better understanding of the situation). we can cross some of the "easy-level" streets now, and are on our way to becoming professional street bravers.

We spent our first two days in Vietnam walking through the downtown narrow streets near our hotel. We were all cautious about buying from street vendors until we were attacked by a pair of old ladies selling, pineapples. It was so bad, they would smash a cone hat on top of heads, stuff a bag of pineapple into our hands, and then urge us to take a picture. Amid shouts for FOTO-MONNEE Bob hands them a ten dollar bill. That basically meant we would spend the next 10 minutes trying to get the money back. By repeatedly telling the lady, in english and with a stern face, to give the money back Rui eventually managed to get one of the ladies to hand back a five. Rui also recognized that the pineapples we ended up with were actually, oh man, LEVEL-18 pineapples, and was kind enough to try and sell it back to the next street vendor we met. Anyway, we eventually ate them because the food was really hot at the indian restaurant, and the pineapples were pretty good.

when we've finally returned to the hotel, we learned that teams from some of the other nations have begun to arrive. we were able to have dinner with the Argentines, who are a new team at the competition this year. we also introduced ourselves to the dutch, the chileans, and the brazilians, and the list will hopefully increase tomorrow.

it's 9:20 in vietnamese time right now. we are reeeeeaaaally tired, causing some of our sentences to be grammatically incorrect and logically unsound. LOL WHAT THE RANDOM AI AM SO TIRED GG. this post will probably be edited tomorrow. vivre la revolution. this is the last word. crap.