Goodbye Vietnam, I'll be back!...

Wow.. Time is flying by...

I've been here a month.
(extened my stay by 2 weeks) Because I loved it so much.
And neglected to let my parent know. "Oops Sorry Dad"
One month is no where near enough. I wish I could stay for at least three more!..

It's been an action packed four weeks. We started painting at Social Support, Disinfected the baby orphanage after an outbreak of pink eye, Phoebe and Thora have taken little Budda and Little old man baby to the doctor on the back of a scooter! "scary".

What else, what else?...Phuc duc is about to start walking, any day. Two babies have been adopted, 5 new babies have been dropped off, Red cross have made some cool travel pillows and eye masks to sell in the new GVN show room. We've attended a Vietnamese wedding, and an extremely sad funeral, Steven turned 27 Natalie turned 36, its been great!

New babies... there are now 12 newborns!. and 10 babies aged 6mths+ at the orphange we work at.. They're stretched! There are 4 carers and 22 babies. Since we arrived, there's been an outbreak of conguntavits, which is almost under wraps, pheew! (and only two men down). But now the babies have horrible chesty coughs "its a viscous cycle" Two have been adopted this month. Gosh and I have to ask! where dose all the money go? Certainly not here!.. I've been told it costs anywhere from 25-$50,000 to adopt a child, but they seem to barely scrape by???

After helping the gorgeous miss Tihn with her physio, I took her for a ride in the wheelchair "She loves it!" It's her reward for trying hard with her walking. We raced down the footpath, with Tihn laughing leaving a dog, some chickens, and a group of elderly men in our dust. When one of the wheels took off in front of us, great entertainment! and luckily I had a firm grip on the wee one.

Well I have enough stories to fill this blog for the next 12 months... its been one of the most fun and enriching experiences I've had in my whole life. I've met some amazing people and fallen head over heels in love with Vietnam. My placement finished last Friday, and I'm now making my way home to NZ..

For those of you thinking this is something you'd like to do. Do it, you wont regret it and there's no time like the present, Volunteers are desperatley needed in Hati at the moment.

I'll post a few new photo's for you each week, and keep you updated, untill the Soul project sends it's next volunteer.

Weekend Adventures!..

We're so lucky!.. We're free to get out there, and explore Vietnam, during the weekends.

So far we have been to Hoi An, a really gorgeous and bustling little beach town, and we have just arrived home from Hue' on Sunday night. Hue' was amazing!.. 6 of us took a dragon boat tour to the tombs, watched some Kung fu! and biked to the Citadel...

I saw an elephant at the Citadel today, he was marvelous and majestic! I felt a little emotional... He was sooo big! and beautiful it was really neat. The Citadal is where the Emperor and his familly lived along with the generals, concubines, servants, and his 140 children.

(Busy Man!..)

We met some other tourists on the boat trip, and met up later for Japanese, DELICIOUS!.. The Lonely Planet recomended this place. So we had high expectations! It was great, the staff were wonderful. I asked the waiteress for a glass of white wine? she walked away and asked her boss to turn on the WiFi.. Funny stuff!..

Great food, great people, great Fun!

Oh and good work Lonely Planet.

Red Cross Vocational Centre

One of the neatest things about GVN, is how each volunteer comes from such different backgrounds. They bring with them, special skills and life experiances, which are proving to be very valuable. Its the end of week two and we've each began to find our own wee niche.

Robin has been fixing an electric wheelchair, for Tam one of the young boys with Cerebral Palsy, he's also fixed a dryer at one of the orphanages. Jody is helping with new brochures and promotional material... Everyone has slotted into their own groove. Last week I was asked to come up with some new products for the students to make at the Red Cross Vocational Centre. I'm really excited about this!

At the Red Cross, well and disabled young peolpe are given the opportunity to learn english and learn a skill which will insure them a brighter future. I love this place its such a great programe they are trained in Printing, embroidery and Tayloring.. Once they are up to standard, the Red Cross helps them to find jobs. This place is really cool!..

Social Support Centre, Danang...

There are two full time carers "mothers" as we call them. Who provide care for around 13 disabled children at the Social Suporrt Centre. So you can imagine they are in serious of help. Volunteers from GVN are at the centre every weekday, we are rotatated on shifts amoung the 4 different placements here in Danag.

There is also a nursery at Social, the mothers in this wing curently look after 4 orphan babies, and 5 disabled children. Here we help out with feeding, stretching and baby massage. GVN has a full time physiotherapist Mr Phuc who accompanies us. He's great!

A couple of the babies here, were abandoned at birth. At first they were placed at a centre for malnourished children, which has since closed down. GVN arranged for them to be moved here to social, and I'm glad to report that they are certainly not malnourished now! Bin Mihn and Phuc Duc are lovely chubby wee babies.

Rebekah and I lead an exercise class for the elderly yesterday, which most of them loved, while the others were just there for the fruit and soy milk they recived afterwards..
its kind of a bribe? to get them socailizing with each other and out and about in the fresh air.

Its been action packed! there are 3 other placments
to tell you about yet ...

Brusha, brusha, brusha...

Today was the first day it's rained, I really enjoyed the cooler air , as yesterday the mercury rose pretty high. This morning I went to Social, we took the kids some soy milk and fruit, and helped the mothers brush their teeth. What a challenge!.. Duc just wasn't having it!.. he was not impressed.

Duc has been at the centre for 10 years, he was a healthy young man until age 14. He became ill and was taken to hospital. Durring the hospital visit he was given some kind of vaccine, and he has never been the same since. He dosen't talk or play and you really have to encourage him to get up and move around, he's very unreponsive. I've managed to get a smile out of him once, I swear he was with me for a few seconds, then his eyes glazed over and and he returned to the land of Duc.

Oh Scooters!....

There was a scooter crash last night, just out side the GVN house. We ran out to see if the guy was ok, but he was out cold. A huge group of people gathered, but no one called an ambulance?.. The only reason I could think of, was that an ambulance probably costs a lot of money and considering there are around 20 million people here who scrape by on only $1-2 US Dollars per day it's understandable.

I'm not sure if there is any such thing as first aid here? A Vietnamese man picked the boy up and shook him silly!.. to our horror!.. he finally came around after the longest 5 minutes ever, shakily stood up and staggered around for a bit, before running off into the night, leaving about 30 people standing there very puzzled? We'll never know exactly what was going on, but I think the young man had stolen the scooter from outside a near by pub, crashed it, then gapped it...

I took this opportunity to give a lecture about the dangers of scooters. I've seen 3 crashes since we arrived. A couple of the other volunteers have witnessed a scooter crash fatality
The roads of Vietnam are not for the faint hearted...

Phuc Duc

Our first placement...

Our first placement was at the Social Support Center, it's a community project which feeds and shelters around 200 people. Most of these people, were previously living on the street. Some are 60-80 years old while others are young orphan babies and children.

Orientation was great, we had a short language lesson, and talked about some of the individuals
we would be meeting.

"Han is a young mentally disabled girl who loves to hold hands and walk"

As soon as we arrived she made a bee line straight for me, grabbed my hand and took me for a walk, around the courtyard. With Han holding one hand, another friend showed up who we've nick named "Hey Oh" he held my other hand and insisted that I say hey oh, "Hello" to everyone we passed along the way. We ended up walking quite a few laps.

We played games with the other disabled children, Lou was especially cool he is a very smiley and happy wee downs syndrome boy, Lou's 8. So many charters!

During the orientation Miss Huang, asked us to do our best not to form any favourites with the kids. Of course I wont!.. but I do have to mention "Phuc Duc" a chubby little Buddha. he is about 5-6months old he's just gorgeous!.. they were being fed when we arrived, and he had rice coming out of his mouth with his little eyes half shut. I had a moment of panic, cause he looked like he was choking. But "false alarm" the wee man was just falling asleep "food coma".

I'll put some photos up of these guys soon but for now here are a few neat snaps of Vietnam, and one of me and Hey Oh another volunteer took.

Happy 2010!..

We touched down in Vietnam on New Years Eve. It has already been an eye opening experience

Trying to cross the road in Ho Chi Min City, a taxi ride Jody and I took yesterday, which involved 24 + people squashed like sardines, into a mini van and speeds of 120km while weaving through a sea of scooters and bicycle's. We definitely take for granted all the lovely wide open spaces and even the road rules we have in New Zealand.

Things I can tell you so far, it's very, very HOT and its the middle of winter!!! There is no such thing as personal space, and I have never seen so many scooters in my life. So much to tell, the GVN staff are fantastic, lovely people.and the 13 other volunteers here this month are a great bunch and an absolute pleasure to have met.

We are rushing off, just now, its just after lunch here and all the volunteers are jumping into the van ready to go to placement so I better run. More later....