Volunteer placement

A bit about my volunteer placement here. I work at what they call a caring center for disabled children. Myself and two other volunteers are working at a center called Phuc Tue. It is in the center of Hanoi near a fairly touristy district. The center is pretty small, three classroomd. Though at the moment children from one of the classes are all away due to the summer holidays. There are about 30 children at the center for the moment in three classrooms. The ratio of children to teachers seems to be fairly high; about 1 teacher to every 3 children or so. The teachers seem to come and go in the classrooms quite frequently. The classrooms are small and the windows are blocked off due to the heat. The children are really lovely and its great spending time with them; the teachers; however, don't seem to want to have much to do with us.

 

The courtyard, the doors of the younger children's classroom

Some of the teachers in the classroom with the more highly mentally disabled children (the lady in the Pink- Thin was probably the most friendly of the teachers, attempting to speak English with us and teaching us some Vietnamese)

The outside wall of the caring center, we've asked to make a new mural on this wall and the director had agreed to let us do it. It is being painted over in one colour next week.

The classroom with the younger children

Photo tour of Peace House and area...

I have taken some pictures of the building where we are living (Peace House). To give you a sense of what it is like here. Unfortunately I haven't yet managed to take a picture of the rat who seems to be one of our roomates.
Water buffalo grazing calmly in the field next to the noisy street




The street to the left of Peace House


The street to the left of Peace House...

The front steps of Peace House

The downstairs hallway and the breakfast and water corner

(yes, we drink a lot of water) This where one of the housemates spied a rat; I suppose he was looking for his breakfast.

The staircase leading to the front door and the office (the only air conditioned room in the building on the left.

My new dorm room (we are 7 people in this room)

Vietnamese washroom- this means it is

everything in one; toilette, shower and sink.

Trying not to get your towel and clothes wet-

a challenge

This isn`t an extensive tour, I haven`t yet included the office (air conditioning!) or the kitchen which are also pretty interesting. (perhaps in another post...)

Visiting Hanoi

On my first Saturday here we had a tour of Hanoi. Volunteers for Peace runs a club for locals. These are mostly university students hoping to improve their english. We had 5 or 6 "local supporters" taking us on a tour of the city. The first thing they took us to was the museum of ethnography. There were explanations about the whole variety of ethnicities in Vietnam, over 50 I think, with fairly major differences between them. We had to rush through the inside part since we were told we only had a limited amount of time to doo the whole tour. The museum also had an outside part which had different types of traditional Vietnamese houses. These were quite beautiful, simple with some lovely wood carvings on some of them.

There was also a small water puppet theatre. There is a basin of water and the puppets appear just above the water. They are manipulated by pupeteers standing in the water at the back of the stage. They usually perform traditional stories and integrate music into the performance. Unfortunately we didn't get to stay for the performance because there wasn't sufficient time.

Next we had Pho in a small restaurant in the old quarter. It was pretty good, it was also pretty loud as we were around 20 (mostly students) in a very small space.

After lunch the local supporters took us to a market. This was an overwhelming experience. Coming from Canada I thought I had a pretty extensive experience with being surrounded by "stuff" all the time, being endlessly sold things, but this was a whole new ball game. There were piles and piles (or sometimes large bags) of objects of every description; from small stuffed toys to shoes to a wide variety of plastic goods. I think we were able to withstand about 10 or so minutes of this assault to the senses. It was impressive.

Seeing that we weren't going to browse the market for the planned 2 hours the local supporters took us Hoan Kiem lake which is right next to the old quarter. This lake is home to a very large turtle which we heard about but did not see. We also visited a temple which was on an island in the lake.

We also had a really good ice-cream near the lake in a sort of mall-like place. You walked up to a booth and they sold you an ice-cream in a cone, the whole freezer was already filled up rows and rows of cones. People were lined up to buy them. Actually when I say lined up I mean people were crowding around the booth attempting to buy some (peope do not line up in Vietnam). The ice-cream was delicious though. I wasn't sure what I was eating but it tasted a bit like coconut. One of the girls who was showing us around surprised me by asking me how many I could eat, I was perplexed and answered "I don't know, one?". To which she answered (proudly) "I can eat five!".

Arriving in Vietnam

The flights from Buffalo to Chicago and Chicago to Hong Kong were pretty uneventful.
When I arrived in Hong Kong, however, it was announced that the flight from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh was cancelled. They were handing out vouchers to stay at a hotel and we would catch a flight out the next morning. I was lucky though because I asked if I could catch a flight to Hanoi instead and I was able to leave that evening. The Hong Kong airport is amazing! There are more then 500 gates. So many stores it looks like a mall. Television sets in the waiting areas.
I called Volunteers for Peace to make sure someone could pick me up at the airport.
I was a bit worried that they wouldn't understand me over the phone. Luckily though when I arrived in Hanoi there was someone there with my name on a sheet of paper, phew! After an hour's drive we finally arrived at Peace House, the office for Volunteers for Peace Vietnam and the dorms for the volunteers. I didn't see much when I first arrived. A gate and a big building. The person who picked me up from the airport (no idea who it was or what their name was...) showed me to my room on the third floor. It was 2 in the morning everyone was asleep. I crept into my bunk, and went to sleep.

It was very strange to wake up having no idea who the other people in the room were, where things were, or what to do. The only thing I knew was my schedule which I had been given at the airport when I arrived. I didn`t have my orientation scheduled until monday. When I got up I wandered into the next room which was a common room. After asking I finally found the washrooms. They have what is called a Vietnamese washroom here which means the shower and the sink and the toilette share the same space. There is a drain in the corner of the room for the water from the shower to drain off.

Here is my dorm room