Neighborhood kids

February 17th, 2010 by Kim Lam

kidsIn the past couple of nights, I’ve met about 10 of the neighborhood kids.   They just came onto the street and in front of the GVN house.  They wanted to play with someone.  This week is Tet week so they don’t have school this whole week and are allowed to stay up late and play.   The neighborhood is so safe that the children run around in the streets at night.  The kids range from 2 to 12 years old.  They seem to know about the volunteer house which has been established for over a year now.   They are very happy playing at GVN house.   They rifled through all the toys and learning material for the  GVN  placements.   They seem to have learned quite a bit of English from previous English speaking volunteers from GVN.   We played for a couple of hours.   Simple stuff like drawing on the sidewalk with chalk and playing dominos. 

I gave each of the neighborhood kids a stuffed animal that you gave me.   They were all very grateful and happy.   These are not the same kids that we volunteer to help.  They are just regular kids from the neighborhood.  They are so so adorable.  Their English is pretty good considering that they picked it up from the other volunteer on the streets.  Five came by last night and then 3 more came by.  They another 2 more.  I let them pick a stuffed animal from the stash my friend Joanne gave me to bring here. 

Three of them are from across the street.  They are being raised by a singlesiblings mom. The father died from a motor bike accident less than 2 years ago yet they don’t seem to be too sad.  Tonight I saw a few more kids;  I’m sure I’ll see more kids by week’s end.  They have asked to drop by the GVN house tomorrow night to play again.  How can you say no to these kids….

Last 5 posts by Kim Lam


A Global Volunteer Network Initiative: http://www.volunteer.org.nz