I suppose it’s about time for me to do an update! February 7, 2010

So what has happened the past week or two? Well, a lot. Luckily I am that obnoxious chick taking pictures every two seconds so by the time I leave I will probably be able to create a flip-book movie of everything that has happened.

Last Sunday we went to Monkey Mountain with some friends for a picnic. The scenery was absolutely beautiful. We went through the whole mountain range, which is pretty interesting when you’re only going by motorbike. Our friend, Mappi, invited one of her friends from Sweden to come with us and I’m pretty sure she came close to dying every time we went down a steep incline. Just kidding–she had bought a dirt cheap motorbike that was not handling the inclines too well though. I ended up getting sunburn, but it’s a small price to pay for such a perfect day.

Tri, me, Map, and Thao at Monkey Mountain!

We took this picture because we thought Thao looked like a cave man. I'm a good friend 😉

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Community service has been going great. I want to take all of the kids I meet home with me. I think the only thing stopping me is that their families would probably miss them. (Ok, and maybe it’s also because I am 21, live with my parents, and am sitting on thousands of dollars in student loans). Whenever we walk into the AO group home the kids are so excited to see us. These kids have come so far because of the staff and volunteers there. This isn’t even comparable to the services at RCC but many of the kids have learned how to talk and are being taught vocational skills which will help them for the rest of their lives.

Some of my cuties! No one is camera-shy here!

He is such a sweetheart!

Two of my favorite girls!

The home visits are still a combination of being very encouraging and very depressing. We visited a family of seven this week that was trying to get by on one income. The father was previously married and had three kids but then his wife died because of a heart condition. Later he remarried a woman who already had one child and then they had another one after that. Two of the kids have disabilities–once MR/physical disability and the other has a heart condition. The husband doesn’t have a steady job so he goes out and tries to find places that will give him work for the day. The family is so poor they no furniture and can’t afford to put a door on their house. If they were homeless they would be able to benefit from a program that would build them a house but since they already house they cannot get anything from that fund. While it would be nice if they could have door, the family isn’t worries about anybody coming into their home and stealing their belongings because they have nothing to be stolen.

We’ve been going to the Loving House and doing the ladies’ nails there. One lady is so grumpy, it’s hilarious. I don’t think she’s too impressed with my multiple ear piercings either. I would have never even thought about something like that at home, but here all of the ladies want to check out my ears. If they saw what other piercings Americans’ have in their ears (or anywhere else!) i think they would have heart attacks. I think I met the future-70-year-old version of myself. When I was massaging the grumpy lady (their idea of a massage involved me punching them on their arms) a woman sitting behind her gestured for me to punch her in the face. It was hilarious–I like this lady already. She knows a couple of words in English and she kept telling us “no work” because the girls had kept us pretty busy with the toenails and massages for the past two hours. I will get pictures of them soon! They are absolutely precious!

What else has happened? Ahh! Unsettling event not just of the week, but probably of my life. Go back to my first post on here–look at the picture of my window. See the lake out there? Yeah–they found a body in there two days ago. My friend Thao called us to come outside and she took us over to the other side of the lake where literally hundreds of people had gathered. We saw the man’s body floating in the water and it took forever for the police and ambulance to get there. I guess a fisherman saw him there and called the police but it was way too late to save him by the time somebody saw him in there. When I was out at the market with her yesterday she stopped at news stand to show me the article. It said his name and caused of death had not yet been identified and it showed a picture of his body!! Yes, in the newspaper. It was so terrible–it’s even worse because their Tet holiday is coming so it’s like finding out your son has died the day before Christmas (except Tet is like Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving combined). I would prefer never to see something like that again.

Last night we went out to what they call a “club”. I think most people at home would just refer to it as a fancy bar. I ordered a margarita and it was blue and did not taste like a margarita? C’mon Vietnam, learn how to make Mexican drinks! I think I could get used to the way Vietnamese drink though–i.e. not as much as humanly possible before the bar closes. The place had a country-western theme and they sang English rock songs. They even took requests. Britton and I taught our friend how to impress girls–our guidance got him a phone number by the end of the night! We’re so proud!

I was trying to move Hung's hand, not choke Nam! I swear!

Me, Khoa, Nam's cousin (Vietnamese names are hard!), Britton, and Hung

That’s another thing–the whole male-female interaction thing is interesting here. Guys and girls are friends with each other but when it comes to being more than that they just don’t know what to do. And no, I’m not talking about that awkward guy that would rather play dungeons and dragons over social interaction. These are smart, funny, clean cut, and genuinely nice guys. As psychology/women and gender studies nerd, I am having an absolute field day with this. It’s so fascinating!

Will somebody please get this kid a behavior plan?! January 28, 2010

So I’ve been meaning to write about this for while and just haven’t gotten to it. Things have been kind of busy but at the same time it hasn’t. We have a lot of free time between our classes and community service but lately I’ve had to use that to get my grad school applications taken care of and to study Vietnamese. Usually I’m pretty good at languages, but now I definitely understand why so many of the students here that we talk to will write out words if we don’t understand them. The different tones they use make it really challenging to understand difference between a lot of the words. Last week I was trying to say “six” to a little girl and she thought I was calling her “ugly”.

Anyway, last week we did home visits with families who a child with disabilities–some are a result of their parents’ exposure to agent orange and and some are from different causes. We went out to the middle of nowhere, if there is Vietnamese word for “the boondocks” that is where we were. When we met the boy it was very obvious that he has some form of pervasive developmental disability. When we first approached his home he was rocking himself back and forth and has the kind of awkward movements that kids on the spectrum usually have if they don’t receive adequate therapy. His father showed us the scars on his arms from where he has bitten himself and on his forehead from hitting his head on the floor. They have to leave him home alone sometimes so they can both go out to work in the rice paddies to support the family so they lock him up in the house until they get home. Nobody has carpeting here–partly because they’re very poor and partly because there are major floods that come through the area every year–so there have been times they’ve returned home he’s been covered in blood from banging his head on the floor. Unlike many the other families we’ve met with, they do not get a lot of help from their neighbors because their home is so isolated from the rest of the community (it is surround by rice paddies, which is kind of like being on island). To get to their home you have to go down a very long, slippery, and muddy road.

Before World Vision offered a physical therapy clinic in their community a couple years ago, this boy didn’t know how to walk. When they dad told us that I asked him if they offered any parent training for them and he said they did not. What World Vision was doing is great, hands down, but now somebody needs to train the family so they know what to do with their child. This kid’s self-injurious behaviors are out of control and the family doesn’t know how handle them. With sensory therapy and a some good behavioral interventions his SIBs could at least decrease or become less severe. I tried explaining how to use deep pressure to help calm his son down, but there is just so much more than that. We gave them money from the Danang Quang Nam Fund to help them out but it’s just really hard to walk away from a situation like that when I know that even just my level of knowledge could turn things around for this kid.

It looks like Britton has new best friend!

This little cutie loved stimming off of Britton's whiskers!

Jumping up and down with Mr. Sensory

Tomorrow we’re doing more home visits and this weekend we’re going to Bai Nam beach and on a picnic with some friends an Monkey Mountain! I’m trying to get into a routine of updating this so please bare with me while I get into the swing of things and figure out all of this html stuff.

Week 2 January 24, 2010

So I haven’t been exactly stellar with keeping this up to date so far, but I’m working on it! Promise!

So what has happened over the past week or so?

We went to Marble Mountains last weekend which had some great scenery. There were a bunch of pagodas there too. The Vietnamese have some legend about monkey trying to jump out of Buddha’s hand and the mountain is one of his fingers–I don’t remember it exactly right. Here are some pictures!

You can see where people have been rubbing his belly!

This is the view from halfway up!

I’ve also had some rather interesting food so far. My first week here I tried Ốc, which is cooked snails that you dip in this chili/fish oil stuff. It tastes better than it sounds, it’s not slimy but the texture is a little weird. I tried squid too and liked it. The only thing I haven’t liked so far is duck eggs. I started eating it an noticed there was something weird in it–that’s when I found out that it has duck embryo in it. Nasty. Yes–I’ll eat snails but for some reason can’t stomach pre-hatched baby ducks. And weird something in it was feathers. Apparently this is supposed to be incredibly nutritious though.

The left over shells

Perk if eating in Vietnam? Shrimp every day! When we went to Hoi An (I’ll talk about this later) we got lunch there and the price for noodles with chicken was the same as noodles with shrimp. Every now and then Xaun or Lieu surprise us with french toast or mashed potatoes though. They take pretty excellent care of us.

Eating Ốc!

We also had lunch at our friend Xuan’s house (not that same Xuan that cooks awesome food for us) with a bunch of friends. We learned how to make spring rolls with rice paper and ate shrimp whole.

More pictures and updates will come soon.

New Blog January 19, 2010

So I attempted to blog on blogger.com but either the website is more than my internet connection can handle or they upset the Vietnamese government (way to go!).  Anyway, I’m just going to copy and paste the posts from before and hopefully this website will work better.

Day 1 in Danang!

I am in Danang! After over 24 hours of sitting on planes and in airports, we’re finally here! We’re pretty much settled in and are going on a tour of the city today. We were only here for maybe an hour or two before some of the local students wandered in and invited us to go the beach. Everyone was saying it was cold out but even at night it was still probably in the low-mid 70s. It was pretty exciting to see the Pacific ocean for the first time! They have a really nice beach here too. When we were there some other people joined us and a bunch of them wanted to speak with us so they could learn to speak English better. I think I’ll be able to understand everyone a lot better once I adjust to the Vietnamese accent.

Today we went to buy school supplies for our classes and when we were waiting outside the store for our staff to come around with the motorbikes a woman walking by stopped so her baby could look at us. It was kind of like when you see parents go to the zoo and they have their kids wave to animals. Haha it was cute.

The traffic here is crazy, I’m not sure what the traffic laws are but the people who have driven for me seem to have it under control.Even though it’s a bit chaotic it almost seems safer than American driving because everybody is paying attention. I also haven’t seen anyone with road rage yet, which I feel like I would have probably seen by now at home in similar traffic. I guess you can’t really say someone is driving like an idiot when the rules are pretty much anything goes.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it so far. Later today the staff are going to take us around and show us the city and then we’re having dinner with the people we’ll be teaching English to each week.

Pictures and videos will be coming soon!

Day 2!

I am not sure how often I am going to be able to post on here because for some reason the internet has a hard time connecting to the server. Here is a picture of the city from my window though! That’s a lake right next to us and the tall building towards the right is Duy Tan University.

Today we had our first culture class and then we went to visit the loving house and the AO group home. I’m probably just going to leave all of my stuff here so I can cram all of the kids in my suitcase when I come home. They are adorable and have so much personality. I’m really glad I took ASL now because being comfortable and familiar with gesturing made it a lot easier to communicate with them. A couple of the kids know a few words though.

After the AO group home we went to the Loving House and met some of the elderly people we’ll be working with. There is a woman there who is over a 100 years old! The attitudes they had seems to be a lot different in the United States. They all seemed really happy. It rained a lot today so the temperature dropped down to the mid-low 60’s and the women there were all surprised that I wasn’t freezing with just jeans and a t-shirt on. They were all so cute in their winter hats!

I’ll put up more pictures when I can get the website to stay connected to the server. I might just setup a snapfish account or something.