Week in review

February 8th, 2010 by Kim Lam

even i don’t consider that i’ve done much in the first week, it’s been pretty draining seeing the orphans and disabled kids.  the traffic is crazy mad here.  we even witnessed a little boy get hit by a truck while crossing the street.  luckily the truck stopped in time and didn’t smash into the kid.  he was able to get up and dust himself off.  the food is pretty good here but we’ve only tried street food a couple of times. the most exotic has been sea snails sauteed with lemon grass. will have to try more later.

i’m doing pretty good over here other than the insomnia and massive mosquito bites from the first week.   the first week of volunteer work is done, so last weekend we booked a trip to Hoi An, a city north of here, to do some partying with some of the other volunteers.

the volunteer house is 3 stories high with 4 bedrooms but there’s sharing of rooms. there’s 4 in mine. we sleep on a mattress on the floor.  vietnamese people here usually sleep on a raised wooden bedding w/o the mattress.  kinda like sleeping on a futon w/o the cushion.  the bathrooms are interesting.  I haven’t seen many squat toilets yet but there seems to be tons showers installed in the bathrooms with bathtubs.  there’s also the spray hose like at the narciso’s outside bathroom.  I was told that was used to hose yourself down if there’s no toilet paper, kinda like a bidet of sorts

aside from the expat volunteers, there are local vietnamese college students who volunteer along with us to either get experience or credit. they want to be around native english speakers also to practice their english.  they are at varying degrees and are sponges for street slang.  one of the words they’ve learned so far is tea-bagging.  i think that one was hard to explain to them but one of the UK volunteers tried to draw it out on the white board. haha.  it didn’t look like it came out right.

Last 5 posts by Kim Lam

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 5:36 am and is filed under Vietnam Orphanage.

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