Day 2 in Vietnam
We all had a good night's sleep ...well if you call waking up at 2 or 3 am it's a good one! At least we all had a bed! The breakfast was awesome...everything from Dragonfruit to Pho and yes, Cocoa Rice Krispie Cereal! Most of us headed off early to the Little Rose Warm Shelter (LRWS) to start the medical checkups for the kids before camp and a few of us stayed behind for the Press Conference.
The "dry" part first - we invited journalists from all across Saigon to announce the Trai He (Summer Camp) and the 5th Annual My Vietnam Art Contest and a lot of the big ones were there. Vietnam News (an english-written paper) is our main media sponsor so they arranged it all for us. Saigon Times, VNExpress and a few others that I don't remember and probably can't pronounce were there. We made our speeches and answered some questions. A few of them had a lot of questions for those of us that adopted from Vietnam (still a very hard thing to explain to Vietnamese people). And all of them were impressed that we had so many volunteers come from the US to "play" with the kids!
At LRWS, the rest of the team set up 8 different stations to do a well-child checkup. Each child first was weighed and measured, then eveyrthing else...vision, hearing, blood pressure, pulse rate, reflexes, neck, glands, skin, head, eyes, ears, and then a final check with our resident Dr. We think that there was over 100 kids throughout the day but I know it was very much appreciated. For most of the children (and even for the staff at the shelter) they had never ever had a physical! Again, thank you to all the medical facilities, professionals, organizations and pharmaceutical companies that donated supplies to make it possible! Our Dr. and 4 nurses on our team are invaluable!
After it ended we headed back to the hotel but unfortunately had A VERY long wait for the taxi ride home. I had posted a picture of this because it was so "memorable". District 7 is one of the poorest distrcits - right next to the river and very "residential" so they rarely see any tourists let alone 25 of them! After waiting about 15 minutes our team started to "melt" in the heat and EVERY head turned to watch!
In the evening we headed back to LRWS for a big buffet dinner. Vietnam YMCA and the girls had organized some dances and a music program for us to thank Catalyst Foundation for the year long support we give (not including the Summer Camp). We were welcomed like super stars and had to dance for our dinner in the "nhay kap" - a rhythm dance with long bamboo poles. A perfect opportunity to crack your ankles if you can't carry a beat! The girls had practiced many songs and dances and were so proud of themselves (as they should be). The YMCA crew even got some of our team members to dance and when you see the picture of Dave just know that we were laughing with him ;-). It was a huge dinner and we had fun but had to call it a night!
We got back in time for a few of us to go up to the Rex for ice cream (a favorite activity among all tourists). Now we have to get ready to go to Nha Trang tomorrow!
We leave at 5 am! That's the plan anyway...any bets on who we have to call and wake up?!
We'll post tomorrow from Nha Trang...enjoy all the pictures!
Peace,
Caroline
