I have had several problems with my other blog site, so have decided to go with tried and true google. I will continue to try and post blogs about the rest of my trip throughout the month. ENJOY and sorry to make you change your saved links!
Sooo I pretty much would consider documenting my trip as far as photographs and blogging goes a complete fail.. but such is life when you are on the adventure of a life time and don't really want to make time to hit up the internet cafe or borrow computers. As far as the photos go.. obviously now I wish I had more photos, you always wish you had more afterwards.. but I enjoyed living in the moment and just soaking things in as they came to me.
As mentioned in that little mini post, November 7th I started volunteering with Vietnam Friendship Village. I didn't know a whole lot about the organization besides a few things I could read about online. Because Hanoi was my first stop in Vietnam I also wasn't sure what exactly it would be like.. However I know my whole trip that I was looking for volunteer opportunities. When I finally found one that was affordable and seemed interesting and in a cool place, I was totally excited about it.
What is the friendship village? It's an amazing place which is funded all by donors and fundraisers by multiple foundations around the world. Main donors are the US, Japan, Germany, France, and a few others. There are a certain small amount of staff, and then volunteers. Volunteers can come as short or as long as they would like. While I was there, a girl from France was just finishing up her 3 weeks, a Vietnamese American volunteer finishing her last semester of college and using FV as sort of an internship she was staying for 6 months and had volunteered the previous year, and an Italian couple were also staying for about 2 weeks. Overlapping my two weeks were an American couple from Seattle, and a Chinese guy studying a masters in Social Work. There were also several volunteers who would come during the day but lived in another volunteer house and had to bike about 30 minutes to reach us.
Staying at the FV were 120 "children" many were almost the same age as me, but were trying to develop some skills so they could have normal jobs. Many were working on sewing, bouquet making, embroidery, and computer skills. In addition to the 120 children there were also 60 veterans who would spend a month at FV and getting necessary health care that they couldn't get at home. Then a new set would come in. The amount of time that the children could stay depended on their condition, and their family, etc. Dung, a girl whom I tutored Ennglish to during my free time had been at the center for 12 years, and FV has been open for 14 years.
Mornings (8-10) & afternoons (2-4) consist of class time, so depending on the student there are 4 different levels of classes for main stream learning where kids do some english, math, vietnamese, singing, basic elementary school skills. Then there were the vocational classrooms. Some kids visited the same classroom morning and afternoon, others had different ones. The students & veterans ate breakfast lunch and dinner at the center and it was a simple vietnamese meal usually consisting of rice, meat, vegetables, and sometimes fruit. Usually the kids said the meals were very plain.. They were always super excited to have a treat from the volunteers. In between classes the students ate lunch then almost everyone took a nap before returning to afternoon class. After class students would eat dinner, then we would play with them outside. Mostly we played badminton, volleyball, and some soccer. Some of the kids were really really athletic. Many of the kids who didn't play the sports would watch tv or watched the games. Others played on the playground. The veterans seemed to kind of do their own thing, but some times interacted with the kids. Some of the older kids, like Dung, Mr. Dough, could speak English pretty well. They had been studying for many years from volunteers coming to FV. Many kids were deaf, mute, or understood very little English which made communicating interesting.. However, because of all their exposure to the volunteers they were very good with charades.
In order to come to the center the students and their parents must test positive to having diosine in their blood.. So they had to be exposed to the agent orange dropped. Kids came from all over the northern part of Vietnam.. or at least it seemed.
While staying at friendship village about 30 students would stay in one house with a house mom. I think.. houses were usually divided up by disability type and age, but sometimes not. The kids all got along really well and it really did feel like such a family. There are a few special needs students who attend the school and live in Hanoi and get dropped off and picked up each day. Some students get to visit their family on the weekends if they come to get them.The center is located about 10 kilometers or 6 miles from the main area of Hanoi.
So my typical day was to wake up, eat a yogurt then head into the therapy room. I was the only volunteer except on Tuesdays two Danish girls came to volunteer, they volunteered elsewhere the rest of the week with the organization they were with. Anyways in the therapy room I wasn't exactly sure about my role and the nurses and assistants didn't really speak great English. The first day they asked me to give exercises to the kids. Many of them hand sorts of numbness in their limbs, some in the neck. Many had just recently mastered walking, a few of the girls still used a walker to walk. Dung, who I mentioned above says that her neck and head were connected to her shoulders until she was 3 and able to have surgery. She couldn't walk until age 9 because of way her legs were shaped. So we did a lot of balance activities, and working on basic things like using a spoon, going up and down stairs, sitting down and up in chairs, etc. Luckily she could speak English so I could get an idea about what other things she had worked on with the therapists, what hurt, and what didn't. With some of the other girls, we practiced counting in English and they loved teaching me how to count in Vietnamese. I can count to 10 :) .
After therapy sessions I would always help all the nurses with their English. They had lots of different resources. Some days we would use alphabet flashcards, other days they studied verses in the bible, other days they had useful english language for daily activities. It was pretty different than in Korea because they were not afraid to try, but their pronunciation needed some work! However I was more than happy to help them and spend time getting to know them. Three ladies were nurses and got extra training in PT from physiotherapists who had volunteered previously. The other two were nurses wanting to become PT's so volunteering for six months I believe.. Then there were random doctors who would come in. We also treated veterans in there but it seemed mostly like they just received nerve biomodulation and massages which the other nurses gave. They had pretty good resources in the therapy room and in most of the classrooms.. which was absolutely amazing to see! They truly have the chance to change their lives at FV.
I ate lunches with the Italian couple at the FV, the cook would make us a special meal after all the staff ate. Usually consisted of a sphaghetti sort of dish, with fresh fruit usually pineapple or dragon fruit, with some sorts of meal, sometimes spring rolls. It was very sweet of her to cook special for us! Dinner time all the volunteers would go and eat Vietnamese food together out in the neighborhood. We ate a lot of Pho which is a simple brothy soup with some bean sprouts, meat. I really enjoy it, others in the group didn't like it as much because it was warm outside. We had lots of delicious fried noodles, fried rice, and my favorite in all of Vietnam was Bun Cha. Bun Cha is a soup made with vinegar, garlic, lemons, and fish sauce, and sugar and pork and you dip the Bun noodles into the soup and eat. It's insanely delicious, I know the description sounds interesting but it is one of a kind. You can only get this style of Bun Cha in the North of Vietnam so I was happy to have it several meals a day.Meals were usually 1 dollar or 1.50.. I always had huge food belly's after dinner!
My first weekend at Friendship Village we didn't have too much planned but decided to make Bun Cha and Nam(spring rolls) for a group of about 25 kids. Since there were three volunteers and one teacher we decided to split the costs.. this is insane to me. For about 5 dollars each (20 total) we feed ourselves and the kids. IT turned out delicious and the kids helped us to cook, clean, and everything. We had a little dance party on the side and it was by far one of my favorite things on my trip.
The second weekend I went to play ultimate frisbee with a group of people I found on facebook. I took a motobike taxi there and the guy got lost and we were super late, but it turned out fine. I got to play a lot and enjoyed meeting new people. Andrew & Franklin, two of my traveling buds had caught up with me and were going to be in Hanoi so I wanted to catch up with them and go out in central Hanoi. So after we played frisbee, one of the girls was very sweet to give me a ride on her motobike. I got her some dinner and loved talking to her. She had studied abroad in New Zealand so had impeccable English and was now working and living with her parents again in Hanoi.
One day, Jennifer, the Vietnamese American volunteer decided she wanted to take one of the lowest level classes out to our favorite rice restaurant for lunch. We had kind of formed a cool relationship with the owners of the restaurant. They were so thankful for our business and had the most delicious food. So again, between the several teachers and kiddos we fed the kiddos by just pitching in a few dollars. After we returned we had a little class party, Luca got out his diggery do, and the kids tried to play it, we sang, danced, (the kids know Gangnam Style, Macarena, Ymca, and the Chicken Dance), played guitar and got a little treat of Coca Cola. About 30 minutes after we returned the kids were so tired and so full, they were so ready for their normal nap time! When I left, I left a thank you note for Jennifer, as she has and had done soo much not only for translating but her passion for the organization and the kiddos, and making the volunteers feel like a family. I left her a thank you note with 20 bucks and told her to do anything she wanted with the kiddos. I know the money will go to great use, and it's such a small amount for me to give but they will absolutely go crazy about.
I really really enjoyed my time spent with the kiddos and really hope I can go back and make even more of a difference. In the mean time I'm also hoping to help somehow with the U.S. Board and their fundraising efforts. This week I finally had the chance to sit down and watch "The Friendship Village" the documentary about how and why FV started. It was incredible and so glad I got to show it to my family. I also didn't realize until watching the film that agent orange is something that will cause problems in Vietnamese people for soo many generations because it is now in the soil.. They cannot grow crops without them containing agent orange. Not to mention, that when agent orange victims have children, sometimes a disability can be passed down. It's disheartening how many Americans have no idea what happened and the things we did in the war, such as drop insane amounts of Napalm, and diosin.
I'm currently reading "The Girl in the Picture", the story of a girl in the South part of Vietnam during the war who was very badly burned with Napalm, but a photograph of her running away from the attack naked and burned became really famous. It's incredible all the things her family had to endure. I'm not even half way through the book and cannot believe how harsh and the terrible things they were put through. I encourage you all the read the book, and check out the documentary, and help out the Friendship Village in any way you can!
Sooo I pretty much would consider documenting my trip as far as photographs and blogging goes a complete fail.. but such is life when you are on the adventure of a life time and don't really want to make time to hit up the internet cafe or borrow computers. As far as the photos go.. obviously now I wish I had more photos, you always wish you had more afterwards.. but I enjoyed living in the moment and just soaking things in as they came to me.
As mentioned in that little mini post, November 7th I started volunteering with Vietnam Friendship Village. I didn't know a whole lot about the organization besides a few things I could read about online. Because Hanoi was my first stop in Vietnam I also wasn't sure what exactly it would be like.. However I know my whole trip that I was looking for volunteer opportunities. When I finally found one that was affordable and seemed interesting and in a cool place, I was totally excited about it.
What is the friendship village? It's an amazing place which is funded all by donors and fundraisers by multiple foundations around the world. Main donors are the US, Japan, Germany, France, and a few others. There are a certain small amount of staff, and then volunteers. Volunteers can come as short or as long as they would like. While I was there, a girl from France was just finishing up her 3 weeks, a Vietnamese American volunteer finishing her last semester of college and using FV as sort of an internship she was staying for 6 months and had volunteered the previous year, and an Italian couple were also staying for about 2 weeks. Overlapping my two weeks were an American couple from Seattle, and a Chinese guy studying a masters in Social Work. There were also several volunteers who would come during the day but lived in another volunteer house and had to bike about 30 minutes to reach us.
Staying at the FV were 120 "children" many were almost the same age as me, but were trying to develop some skills so they could have normal jobs. Many were working on sewing, bouquet making, embroidery, and computer skills. In addition to the 120 children there were also 60 veterans who would spend a month at FV and getting necessary health care that they couldn't get at home. Then a new set would come in. The amount of time that the children could stay depended on their condition, and their family, etc. Dung, a girl whom I tutored Ennglish to during my free time had been at the center for 12 years, and FV has been open for 14 years.
Mornings (8-10) & afternoons (2-4) consist of class time, so depending on the student there are 4 different levels of classes for main stream learning where kids do some english, math, vietnamese, singing, basic elementary school skills. Then there were the vocational classrooms. Some kids visited the same classroom morning and afternoon, others had different ones. The students & veterans ate breakfast lunch and dinner at the center and it was a simple vietnamese meal usually consisting of rice, meat, vegetables, and sometimes fruit. Usually the kids said the meals were very plain.. They were always super excited to have a treat from the volunteers. In between classes the students ate lunch then almost everyone took a nap before returning to afternoon class. After class students would eat dinner, then we would play with them outside. Mostly we played badminton, volleyball, and some soccer. Some of the kids were really really athletic. Many of the kids who didn't play the sports would watch tv or watched the games. Others played on the playground. The veterans seemed to kind of do their own thing, but some times interacted with the kids. Some of the older kids, like Dung, Mr. Dough, could speak English pretty well. They had been studying for many years from volunteers coming to FV. Many kids were deaf, mute, or understood very little English which made communicating interesting.. However, because of all their exposure to the volunteers they were very good with charades.
In order to come to the center the students and their parents must test positive to having diosine in their blood.. So they had to be exposed to the agent orange dropped. Kids came from all over the northern part of Vietnam.. or at least it seemed.
While staying at friendship village about 30 students would stay in one house with a house mom. I think.. houses were usually divided up by disability type and age, but sometimes not. The kids all got along really well and it really did feel like such a family. There are a few special needs students who attend the school and live in Hanoi and get dropped off and picked up each day. Some students get to visit their family on the weekends if they come to get them.The center is located about 10 kilometers or 6 miles from the main area of Hanoi.
So my typical day was to wake up, eat a yogurt then head into the therapy room. I was the only volunteer except on Tuesdays two Danish girls came to volunteer, they volunteered elsewhere the rest of the week with the organization they were with. Anyways in the therapy room I wasn't exactly sure about my role and the nurses and assistants didn't really speak great English. The first day they asked me to give exercises to the kids. Many of them hand sorts of numbness in their limbs, some in the neck. Many had just recently mastered walking, a few of the girls still used a walker to walk. Dung, who I mentioned above says that her neck and head were connected to her shoulders until she was 3 and able to have surgery. She couldn't walk until age 9 because of way her legs were shaped. So we did a lot of balance activities, and working on basic things like using a spoon, going up and down stairs, sitting down and up in chairs, etc. Luckily she could speak English so I could get an idea about what other things she had worked on with the therapists, what hurt, and what didn't. With some of the other girls, we practiced counting in English and they loved teaching me how to count in Vietnamese. I can count to 10 :) .
After therapy sessions I would always help all the nurses with their English. They had lots of different resources. Some days we would use alphabet flashcards, other days they studied verses in the bible, other days they had useful english language for daily activities. It was pretty different than in Korea because they were not afraid to try, but their pronunciation needed some work! However I was more than happy to help them and spend time getting to know them. Three ladies were nurses and got extra training in PT from physiotherapists who had volunteered previously. The other two were nurses wanting to become PT's so volunteering for six months I believe.. Then there were random doctors who would come in. We also treated veterans in there but it seemed mostly like they just received nerve biomodulation and massages which the other nurses gave. They had pretty good resources in the therapy room and in most of the classrooms.. which was absolutely amazing to see! They truly have the chance to change their lives at FV.
I ate lunches with the Italian couple at the FV, the cook would make us a special meal after all the staff ate. Usually consisted of a sphaghetti sort of dish, with fresh fruit usually pineapple or dragon fruit, with some sorts of meal, sometimes spring rolls. It was very sweet of her to cook special for us! Dinner time all the volunteers would go and eat Vietnamese food together out in the neighborhood. We ate a lot of Pho which is a simple brothy soup with some bean sprouts, meat. I really enjoy it, others in the group didn't like it as much because it was warm outside. We had lots of delicious fried noodles, fried rice, and my favorite in all of Vietnam was Bun Cha. Bun Cha is a soup made with vinegar, garlic, lemons, and fish sauce, and sugar and pork and you dip the Bun noodles into the soup and eat. It's insanely delicious, I know the description sounds interesting but it is one of a kind. You can only get this style of Bun Cha in the North of Vietnam so I was happy to have it several meals a day.Meals were usually 1 dollar or 1.50.. I always had huge food belly's after dinner!
My first weekend at Friendship Village we didn't have too much planned but decided to make Bun Cha and Nam(spring rolls) for a group of about 25 kids. Since there were three volunteers and one teacher we decided to split the costs.. this is insane to me. For about 5 dollars each (20 total) we feed ourselves and the kids. IT turned out delicious and the kids helped us to cook, clean, and everything. We had a little dance party on the side and it was by far one of my favorite things on my trip.
The second weekend I went to play ultimate frisbee with a group of people I found on facebook. I took a motobike taxi there and the guy got lost and we were super late, but it turned out fine. I got to play a lot and enjoyed meeting new people. Andrew & Franklin, two of my traveling buds had caught up with me and were going to be in Hanoi so I wanted to catch up with them and go out in central Hanoi. So after we played frisbee, one of the girls was very sweet to give me a ride on her motobike. I got her some dinner and loved talking to her. She had studied abroad in New Zealand so had impeccable English and was now working and living with her parents again in Hanoi.
One day, Jennifer, the Vietnamese American volunteer decided she wanted to take one of the lowest level classes out to our favorite rice restaurant for lunch. We had kind of formed a cool relationship with the owners of the restaurant. They were so thankful for our business and had the most delicious food. So again, between the several teachers and kiddos we fed the kiddos by just pitching in a few dollars. After we returned we had a little class party, Luca got out his diggery do, and the kids tried to play it, we sang, danced, (the kids know Gangnam Style, Macarena, Ymca, and the Chicken Dance), played guitar and got a little treat of Coca Cola. About 30 minutes after we returned the kids were so tired and so full, they were so ready for their normal nap time! When I left, I left a thank you note for Jennifer, as she has and had done soo much not only for translating but her passion for the organization and the kiddos, and making the volunteers feel like a family. I left her a thank you note with 20 bucks and told her to do anything she wanted with the kiddos. I know the money will go to great use, and it's such a small amount for me to give but they will absolutely go crazy about.
I really really enjoyed my time spent with the kiddos and really hope I can go back and make even more of a difference. In the mean time I'm also hoping to help somehow with the U.S. Board and their fundraising efforts. This week I finally had the chance to sit down and watch "The Friendship Village" the documentary about how and why FV started. It was incredible and so glad I got to show it to my family. I also didn't realize until watching the film that agent orange is something that will cause problems in Vietnamese people for soo many generations because it is now in the soil.. They cannot grow crops without them containing agent orange. Not to mention, that when agent orange victims have children, sometimes a disability can be passed down. It's disheartening how many Americans have no idea what happened and the things we did in the war, such as drop insane amounts of Napalm, and diosin.
I'm currently reading "The Girl in the Picture", the story of a girl in the South part of Vietnam during the war who was very badly burned with Napalm, but a photograph of her running away from the attack naked and burned became really famous. It's incredible all the things her family had to endure. I'm not even half way through the book and cannot believe how harsh and the terrible things they were put through. I encourage you all the read the book, and check out the documentary, and help out the Friendship Village in any way you can!
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