Jeff Dinert CP8

On Wednesday July 17th I met Hoa at his lab and we went and grabbed a coffee at Redeye. Him and I were chatting s always about a current affair issue as the debt crisis and the upcoming vote on whether or not to raise the debt ceiling and what I thought were the options for the corrections of these problems, and as usual I tried to take a unbiased point of view and describe for him the best I could how both of our major parties look at the issues, and also how they stall one another's progress toward enacting their positions on the issues. all this was on the drive over. Hoa did not think that just cutting programs would solve the issue but also that he thought all the money we borrow from China was a problem because we borrow from them, acquire interest and then use the money to buy more products from China, and in this way we could never get out of debt.
We then arrived and got our coffee when I ran into a couple of my friends, and they asked us to join them. I thought wondeful, an opportunity for conversation and I intrduced Hoa to everyone and we sat down. My friend Richard said he knew where Hoa was from because he had been there during the Vietnam war, and this set off a string of curious questions by Hoa. Hoa was born after the war ended but it lingered in his country for many years afterward. Hoa saw this as an opportunity to hear an American's perspective on the war and to learn, but Richard although very polite gave short answers to the effect of not much interest into going into details. Richard would try and change the subject, and Hoa would speak and then go back to another question about the war for Richard. Hoa couldn't tell but there was mild amount of tension in the conversation, and this seemed to me to be a bit of culture clash as well as not picking up on cues from the American that he was uncomfortable. Anyway, Richard and Hoa eneded the subject on that Vietnam is much changed and Richad thought he might like to visit under a completely different set of circumstances. My friends left, very cordially, no animosity or what have you, and the elder gentleman said what helped him learn Spanish was watching Spanish soap operas and learning the speech, and maybe Hoa could try that on his semester break, a little a day, and afterward Hoa and myself sat and chatted about what it might be like for me to live in Vietnam. This was cut short for Hoa had to get back to his lab to make some readings, ut he and i chatted all the way back about Vietnam and how it changed the American political view, and polarized it into kind of what it is today, at least probably more than any moment in our short American history.