Week 5: Calories?

Welcome back to my blog! As for those who are on spring break, hope you all got some well deserved rest and good luck on the final push before the end of the school year.

As I mentioned last week, I got to visit my first middle school (commonly referred to as "secondary school" in Vietnam) and got to sit in their classes and *drum roll* distributed and collected about 200 surveys. When I return to the states, I will finally compile all my completed surveys into an organized and coherent manner, but for now I have them all neatly kept. Since my arrival to Vietnam, the language barriers has definitely been a struggle for me trying to accurately convey my intentions without losing some of the meaning in translation. For the most part, I have been able to explain what I mean but was never able to receive true insight on nutrition as an underlying factor to academic performance.

However, one of the most exciting events happened this week! My advisor gave me a contact to a Vietnamese teachers that has taught English for over 17 years and I got a chance to sit down and talk to him. He was able to talk about his experience as a teacher and how nutrition played a role in his students' lives and overall performance inside and outside of class. He even gave me the opportunity to sit down with a group of his 9th graders to have an open discussion about healthy eating and whether or not they believed nutrition dictated their academic achievements. One of the topics we discussed in-depth is the idea of "calories." All of the students had previously heard of the term, but did not know any basic knowledge about it. In their daily lives they do not emphasize calorie intake nor do they know how many calories they were consuming in a day. I asked if they were able to differentiate the amount of calories present in an apple versus a cake and none were able to tell me anything. But, when talking about healthy eating choices, many were confident to share that they do make healthy nutritious choices, such as eating more fruits and staying away from street food . It was interesting to see that they were consciously aware of their body and the types of food they were consuming, but with no knowledge of calories or why some foods make them feel and perform better. (i.e. the presence of trans fat, high sodium, or artificial flavoring)

This will conclude my excursions to the different schools in Vietnam for my project. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be able to learn like a true native here and see for myself the cultural differences and the different types of learning styles. For the next 2-3 weeks, I will be focusing on my project literature and putting them into context with what I've learned so far from my stay here.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and please come back soon!

Best,
Crystal Vo

The middle school of Lac Hong and my on-site advisor (left)