College student visits Vietnam, Estonia on two very different trips – The Globe

RUSHMORE — Claire Hoffman, of rural Rushmore, took two trips this summer before her senior year at South Dakota State University — a study abroad trip to Vietnam and a mission trip to Estonia.

Hoffman is studying agriculture science at SDSU and will graduate a year early. Her visit to Vietnam was a study abroad trip through the College of Agriculture.

The trip counted as a three credit class, two were credited in the spring semester after taking a two-hour class every Monday. The third credit was for fulfilling blog requirements during the trip.

“We left right after finals week, I think we left May 12,” Hoffman said. “We got back the 25th (of May).”

She traveled with 30 others, including her instructors, for over 35 hours in the air. The group flew from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to Minneapolis, where they boarded a direct flight to Korea. The last leg of their journey took them to northern Vietnam.

“When we got there, it was very humid,” Hoffman said. “And it kinda smelled different. But, overall, I think I was more excited for the trip, so anything negative I would have thought was really not at the forefront. I was just excited to be there.”

The two-week trip was split into a few days in each part of the country: northern, middle and southern. They stayed in different hotels in cities such as Sa Pa, Hanoi, Da Nang, Hội An and Ho Chi Minh City.

“We were moving around a lot,” Hoffman said.

While there, they tried to do agriculture-related things, including visiting a lot of farms.

“Their agriculture is not very traditional like ours is here,” Hoffman said. “We saw a duck farm, a fish farm, flower farm, honeybee farm. We didn’t really see any animals, like pig, cattle… just more fish and ducks.”

The biggest culture shock for her in Vietnam were the street markets.

“They just have wet markets, they are called, where they butcher the meat on the streets and in the markets,” she said. “They butcher them and sell them at the same place.”

She also noted that the food there was very different from the food here.

“A lot of seafood, rice,” she said. “It was all very good, but it was just non-traditional food.”

She noticed the people in Vietnam mostly get around on mopeds, but since she was with such a big group, they took a bus everywhere.

Thankfully, the group had a tour guide that helped with language barriers.

“He was very good about speaking on our behalf and making sure everything was taken care of,” Hoffman said. “But a lot of people understood the basics… I think I know how to say ‘Thank you’ and ‘Please,’ but I would have to look again.”

Her favorite part of the Vietnam trip was spending time in Sa Pa, a far north city, during the first week.

“Sa Pa is where there are other rice fields and mountains,” she said. “The rice paddies are so beautiful. We spent a day and we hiked five or six miles in the mountains and it was just beautiful.”

They did other sightseeing as well, visiting the “Hanoi Hilton” prison, a prisoner-of-war camp known as Hoa Lo Prison to locals. They also saw the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Hoffman said if she were to go back to Vietnam, she would take her dad with her as he would be very interested in this site.

When Hoffman returned to the states, everything was “back to normal” for about a month, then she boarded a plane once again. This time, she was in a group of 15 people bound for Estonia on a mission trip through Worthington’s Solid Rock Church. The group left June 30.

“When we got there, it was much cooler and less humid than here,” Hoffman said. “And it was just beautiful outside. The architecture and everything was beautiful and it just made me really excited to see what the next two weeks had in store.”

The mission trip to Estonia came about because two missionaries and their daughter who were originally from Solid Rock live there. “We spent some of the days with them and then their friends that live there,” Hoffman said.

When they were there, they did a lot of intentional praying over the people, cities and places where they went.

“Estonia is the country with the most unreached people,” Hoffman said. “They’ve never heard about Jesus or the gospel or the Bible. We just did a lot of praying and just trying to reach people.”

Unlike Vietnam, Hoffman said she didn’t sense any culture shock during her visit to the European country. She said it was similar to home, except maybe the weather was a little nicer and some people didn’t speak English.

“In Estonia, they speak Estonian, which is actually one of the hardest languages to learn beside English,” Hoffman said. “Otherwise, they really spoke British English, so that wasn’t too hard.”

For the entirety of the trip, the group stayed in one hotel in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. While most people had cars, other public transportation, such as trams, were available.

“We took tram a lot of the time,” Hoffman said. “Or we just walked, which is really nice because everything is so close together.”

Hoffman also visited two other countries during the trip.

“While we were in Estonia, we actually spent a day in Finland,” she said. “We took a ferry, it’s only like a two-hour ferry ride… and then we also spent a day in Riga, Latvia, which is a country to the south (of Estonia) and we just went there and they had a museum from the Soviet occupation. So we did that, and then we did a lot of praying and church seeing.”

When Hoffman returned home July 11, she noticed a difference in food.

“I think coming back from Estonia — well, both places, I guess — there’s so many added things (in the food here) and the fruit and stuff is so much better over there. When I came back here, the fruit’s not as tasteful.”

She also said the humidity was a big change when coming home.

“It was more humid in Vietnam than here,” she said. “But it was more humid here than Estonia because it’s way north.”

Hoffman said she would go back to Estonia one day because of its beauty and the people.

“They have a hard exterior, but they’re super nice,” she said of Estonians.

She equally enjoyed both trips.

“I feel very grateful and blessed that I got to go on both trips and experience both because they’re both very different from each other, but still very valuable,” she said. “I would just encourage other people. Like, I didn’t know if I was going to go on either one or if I was adventurous enough, but it’s 100% worth it.”

Hoffman is spending the rest of the summer at home until she returns to college in late August. She will complete her internship at Professional AG Marketing in Luverne and help her sister at the Nobles County Fair.