25/10

One day we were having a meeting when suddenly Vee asked us: „What if we organize an event about Mai’s journey with her Czech friend?“ After hearing this idea we all agreed and said: „Ok, let’s do it.“ From that moment we started the preparations. 

It was a new experience for everyone, except for Vee. Nobody knew what to expect from it and how much work and communication will be needed. I have to admit that we had an intense preparation. We came to every meeting which also bonded us more as a group.

We were posting the progression of the event on our social media regularly, and because of the magic and power of social media, we got our first sponsor. Vee shared this idea of the event on her FB and Tung, who’s CEO of a Vietnamese-Czech educational institute, noticed our poster online. And because he really liked the idea of our project, he decided to send us his products Master Vietnam and in exchange we would promote them.

When we thought about how to make our event more interesting and entertaining for our guests we came up with these ideas: a quiz about Vietnam, tea tasting with Vietnamese dessert, custom tote bags, coffee and tea as a gift for winners, and lastly – a special Vietnamese menu.

Our team wanted to make the experience for our guests as authentic as we could so we came up with the idea of a special menu with traditional Vietnamese cuisine. It’s the part of the day when people have a good, quality time together. 

Our ideas were set, that was the easy part. The next step was to make them into reality.

We had to find a place where the event would be held, prepare our blog and our Facebook page, create a Facebook event, we had to come up with the design of the poster and promote it on social media to attract people‘s attention, paint the tote bags, create the quiz and make the presentation, within 3 weeks.

Luckily, we had connections with one lovely couple who owns Bambus restaurant right on the square. We told them about our event in brief. They loved our idea and the meaning of it and eventually, they agreed to lend us their place right away.

I’d say that the week before the event was the most hectic one because we had to prepare the quiz for the guests, prices for winners, make a list of hosts, do a presentation about Vietnam, and Mai and her friend Alen had to prepare their speech.

18/9 was the day of our event. The event was supposed to start at 4 pm. We met in Bambus at 3 pm to make sure that we had everything prepared. We had to prepare a seating chart and fortunately, we were able to fill up the whole capacity. We had some complications with our notebook which was supposed to be used for our presentation. Luckily enough our team member Martin had his notebook prepared for these cases. I think we were very blessed because whenever something went wrong or when we had a complication, everything was somehow solved in the end.

Mai and Aja talked about their journey for about an hour. It was a new experience for them since they have never talked in front of a big audience before. They were kind of worried but in the end, it wasn‘t even noticeable how much they were stressed. They talked about their expectations, experiences, and perspectives through the eyes of a Vietnamese girl born in Czechia and a Czech girl. We had a good time and great laughs during our presentation. 

It was our guest’s first experience with this kind of dining. The whole meal was prepared and cooked in Bambus and everyone loved it. All this hard work paid off when we saw and heard their reactions. We received some positive feedback from our guests when they were leaving.

It was one of our first achievements during this project and because of the whole preparation, we bonded together as a team. We learnt something new from others and learnt how everyone works during stressful situations and most importantly, we managed to work as a team. 

Thank you team for this.