For those who wonder about Vietnamese sentiment towards Americans:
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist : The Miracles of Realism
by Roger Cohen
A few months ago I went out with my students for our last class and I told them that before I left the States many people asked me, "But don't Vietnamese people hate Americans?" Their reaction was laughter and they just said, "No, no, no!" They've moved on and apparently we haven't. They've been here to see the country rebuild itself and become stronger from the bottom up. Plus, like the op-ed piece above states, the majority of the Vietnamese population was born after 1975, so they have no notion or experience of living in a country at war.
For the entire year that I have been living in Vietnam I have never felt any sort of animosity from the people. When they ask me where I'm from and I tell them "My" (pronounced: mee-ee), American, they respond either with fascination or disinterest. Both are OK with me. It was really cool after Obama was elected because when I told people I was American, many people would say, "Wooo! Obama!!"
An interesting tid bit: at IIE I learned that Vietnam is making its way into the top ten countries sending their students to the United States to study (India is #1, China #2). Since last year, they've been at #13.
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