Debate and Class with Brittany!

We had a very packed schedule today at TDTU! The morning started
off as usual: the Cornell students met in the canteen to eat, and I got egg noodles and a
Yogurt Da. When we arrived to class, we started our first day of mediation. Professor
Richard Fincher threw us into it immediately, and we had a mock mediation with a sample
case he gave us. In a case involving an employee with a disciplinary record who
accidentally damaged company property, management and the union ultimately agreed to
reinstate her on a last chance agreement.

In the afternoon’s class, we transitioned to a more serious topic: the Vietnam War. It was a
profound experience to learn about while in Vietnam, especially after meeting so many
wonderful Vietnamese people. What stuck out to me the most was the U.S.’s strategy: to
cause as many casualties as possible. I felt unnerved when I learned that the U.S. used body
counts as a metric of success for the majority of the war.

In the evening, we attended a debate class with our Vietnamese counterparts and
partnered with them. Together, we argued over all sorts of topics ranging from soda to the
internet! My favorite part was seeing how different some of the Vietnamese students’
perspectives were from ours. Socializing with them felt easy and highlighted our
similarities: we all like sports, spending time with our friends, and we are all worried about
finding jobs. The debating, though, really served to highlight some of the differences we
have that in large part emerge from living under different governmental systems that exist
on opposite sides of the world.
Finally, we finished off the day with some street food with our Vietnamese friends. It was
AMAZING!