We started the day with the Fajr prayer, followed by our morning dhikr and a group Qur'an recitation. Meanwhile, the six people assigned to kitchen duty headed to the local market to buy ingredients for everyone's meals. After finishing our Qur'an reading, we were given some free time. Some people chose to read books, others took showers or did their laundry, but most of us made the exact same decision—we went straight back to sleep. After staying up late the night before, everyone felt a little sleep-deprived, and I was definitely part of that majority.
I woke up again at around 7:30 AM, which turned out to be perfect since our classes would begin at 8:00. There was just enough time to get ready. After taking a shower, we had breakfast and walked to the accommodation where Groups 1 and 2 were staying, as that was where the students from my major had their classes. Our first lesson of the day was English, and our assignment was to create two vlogs—one to be completed this week and another for next week. We formed groups of three, discussed our ideas, and quickly settled on our concepts.
Our first vlog was about culture shock—the little things that felt noticeably different from Indonesia. For example, people here never seemed to hesitate before using their car horns. Back home, honking usually means something important is happening, but here, getting honked at dozens of times a day almost felt normal. We also noticed that stray dogs were everywhere, something that felt very different from Indonesia. Another thing that stood out was how proudly people displayed the Vietnamese flag. It was everywhere—on houses, cafés, shops, and street corners. No matter where you walked, it was almost impossible not to see another red flag waving in the distance.
Our second vlog was much simpler. We planned to visit an area filled with international tourists and ask them one straightforward question: "What's your impression of Vietnam after staying here?" We thought it would be interesting to hear how people from different countries viewed the place we were experiencing ourselves.
After English class, we continued with our IT lesson, where we learned the fundamentals of routing protocols. Around lunchtime, we were finally allowed to go outside, and of course, our main mission was filming the vlog. I spent some time recording everything we needed—cars honking, stray dogs wandering through the streets, Vietnamese flags hanging outside buildings, and anything else that perfectly captured the culture shocks we had experienced. While we were out, we grabbed lunch before returning to the accommodation for an afternoon nap.
When we woke up, we took showers and gathered once again to read the Qur'an together. Later that evening, we had dinner, and before ending the day, I sat down to write today's journal. After that, it was finally time to get some sleep.