Just one week to go before we head to Hanoi. Last night was our orientation meeting. As part of the meeting, we discussed how we might fully capitalize on this upcoming adventure.

We decided that with a little mental, physical, and emotional preparation, we should be able to accomplish each of the following during our trip:

Improve our intelligence through discomfort.
Experience a journey of self discovery.
Develop cultural sensitivity.
Find opportunities to network and make new friends.
Discover the commonality of man.
Write a good story worth retelling.
Enjoy both serendipity and synchronicity.

To that end, we want to use this blog to reflect on our day-to-day experiences and lessons. Each day a different person will write a blog post sharing the details of the day and responding to a reflective prompt. We will address such topics as food, economics, politics, the environment, cross-cultural misunderstandings, social relations, and on and on. By doing so, we hope to make this trip very memorable for those in the group, and educational for those who may read the blog.

As Cesare Pavese once said, “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things –air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”

While we certainly aren't masochists seeking brutality, we are adventurers who thrive in the realms of the unfamiliar. We hope we can gain a better grasp of the eternal--or what we imagine of it. Thanks for reading and for sharing the adventure with us.