About work: Life at HUTECH University is great! All the teachers are kind, lovely and very lively, and they help us a lot to find meaning here. They give us lots of advice, help us observe classes and do practical work. Outside of class, they feed us Vietnamese food and sweets every day and give us the opportunity to wear yukata and ao dai. They also invited us to play with them on holidays and we went to school almost every Saturday and Sunday. It was the best and the best thing that I could have done under such teachers and I am really grateful to them. I also played with the students almost every day. Every day my schedule was full and after school, everyone took me on the back of their motorbikes after school to have dinner and talk at my friends’ houses. They helped me a lot because I didn’t understand Vietnamese, and they contacted the Grab people to help me get home safely, and they translated my food and told me what I wanted to eat. Some of my friends promised to meet me when I came to Japan in the future and said we would keep in touch when I returned to Japan, so I was really happy to have come here.

About host family: In terms of my relationship with my host family, I was sometimes confused at first because of the cultural differences, but they were very kind to me, worrying about my return and eating with me. They took me to places where I could learn about Vietnamese customs and Vietnamese history. I took everyone’s advice and made my opinions known to them, which made them respect my ideas. They probably think of me as their sister. I think I have a very good host family, they communicate with me, they worry about my health, they help me when I’m on my mobile phone. In a way, I had a good cross-cultural experience.

ABROADER side: We think ABROADER’s level of support was great. We really enjoyed the hotel we stayed at on the first day of the program. However, we think it would be better if ABROADER worked more closely with APU and the host university. We didn’t have a class schedule at the beginning of the program, so it was hard for us to prepare for teaching classes.