Day 2: Conference & Dinner Cruise

On Monday morning I made my way down to the hotel conference room where faculty and staff from a variety of Vietnamese universities were gathering with the sound of Abba hits playing in the background. My presentation was about 15 minutes long and no sweat at all. I should have been pretty intimidated I suppose considering the company, but when less than 50% the people understand what you're saying and even less care what you're saying, its pretty easy to relax. And at the end of the day, if someone doesn't like the presentation I just blamed it on the translator ;) Since the rest of the conference was in Vietnamese and I felt bad making someone translate for me, I entertained myself on my laptop by surfing the internet, downloading audio books and normalizing some financial statements... good times.

That evening, the NEU group had dinner while sailing down the Hàn river (the main river in Da Nang). Some of the younger professors drank a little too much and as a result became a little overzealous in their attempts to make me feel welcomed. I tried to take it in stride but I'm sure my face was a deeper red than the Vietnamese flag... this wouldn't be the first or last time the group would experience my blush. I wish there was a surgery to prevent blushing, its such a handicap.