36th and 37th Days

On Sunday we had an other team meeting, with the student clubs of the universities who would help us promote the "Lead the Change Contest" on the following week. For us interns it wasn't very relevant as they discussed everything in vietnamese, but we discussed some other details about the workshops and some trips with Nhung, our project leader.

In the afternoon I fount out that my two host sisters were free so we decided to go to the Independence Palace together. We usually have very different schedules so we never have the time to do something together apart from the evenings where we chat and show each other some pictures, so it was nice to finally do something with them. We walked around there and it was very interesting, and then we took a lot of pictures in the park surrounding the palace. Those two girls are very fun to hang out with!

Monday was the first day of the class promotions in different universities, to encourage the students to be part of the "Lead the Change Contest". We were divided into two groups (Jan and me with Long, and Carlijn and Yusuke with Hieu - Melanie was somewhere at the beach with her host), and went to two different universities to promote. So we met in front of the FTU and travelled to our destination by bus, and it was very far away from the center so the ride was long... Once we were there, one or two of the students from the universitie's clubs welcomed us and showed us where to go etc., so we went to a lot of classes during the breaks and spoke to the students and told them about the contest. Most of the seamed to be very interested, as the winner's prize is of 3'600USD!! I think we did a good job and there will be a lot of participants.

In the afternoon we were already done and took the same bus to get back into the city, but at the moment we got out of the bus, it started pouring so we had to find a shelter very quickly and wait there, but the rain didn't stop so we called a cab, counted to three and ran across the street into the car, and were already completely soaked... When it rains here, it really rains!! The rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxed, that was fine to me!! The promotions would continue the whole week but we only did it on the first day to show the students of the clubs how they have to do it, and also a lot of students don't understand every thing we are saying when we speak english, so it makes more sense to do it in vietnamese...

34th and 35th Days

Only a week left until I fly back to Germany! Time passes very quickly and I will always remember this time in Vietnam as a very happy and interesting time! And I really hope to come back soon!

Friday was very relaxed (for once), we didn't have any thing to do, so I slept out and then went to town to have some lunch. I came back at around 2pm and waited for the interns to come to our home, because my host family had invited them to have dinner with us and maybe watch a movie all together. So they arrived at 5pm and every one was very relaxed, we all gathered in my room and chatted. I already told you that we have two new interns now, Yusuke from Japan and Jan from Belgium. It was nice to talk to then and get to know them a little better! And of course, the dinner was delicious!! But every one went home quite early after that, because on Saturday we had something big planned: We were going to visit an HIV-positive children's shelter home!

We had to meet at 6am at Ben Thanh Market, that meant that I would wake up at 5 at least... But of course, as it's Vietnam, 6am means that you can come half an hour later and every body will still be waiting for you, and that's exactly what happened, and at the end we only left at 7am. I was still a little bit ill so I wasn't feeling very well, and Carlijn still had some stomach problems... We took a bus to Cu Chi (where the Cu Chi Tunnels were - we visited them in the beginning of my stay here), and from there we took an other bus to the shelter home, and walked the rest of the way. We had a lot of things with us, books, toys, etc. that we were going to give the children.

So we stayed there the whole morning and played with the children, sang some songs, painted with them, and then gave them some of the presents (they lived in very good conditions, so we thought we would keep some of the things for other shelter homes who would need them more), and yeah it was a very interesting experience. The kids were very bright and very energetic, and we all bonded very well with them, we had a lot of fun! We also took a lot of pictures...

After that we had lunch on the street and then took our busses to get home. Every one was pretty tired so we all said (the interns), we would rest in the afternoon and maybe go out in the evening, but in the evening we were all still very tired and I was still feeling ill so we decided not to do anything, it was better that way I think...

29th to 33rd Days

Hello, it's been almost a week since I wrote last and I'm sorry about that. As I presume you already figured, I was very busy this week. On Sunday I had my very first workshop (the other girls had already their first one when I was in Cambodia) at KTDC (the place where we had our presentation skills training), in front of about 20 people so it was very relaxed and it went very well, I was proud of my presentation! And in general, the whole presentation was very good! In the evening we had a dinner with the AIESEC intern supporting team, and I finally met Yusuke, our new intern from Japan, who was very nice. I also met Jesse, an exchange member from the USA, who wasn't part of any project but had his own internship in Ho Chi Minh City. It was a very warm evening, I met a lot of AIESECers that I had never seen before!

Monday was even better, because we had the biggest workshop ever for this project, in front of a whole school!! There were about 1'200 students listening to us!! A great experience!! I had to wake up at 4am to be in front of FTU at 5am so that we could all travel together to the school which was quite outside of the city, and it started at 7am. First there was a huge ceremony (which occurs every Monday morning in every high school of the city - if not of the country), with saluting and singing the national hymn and every thing, it was very impressive how disciplined the students where!! After that we could start our workshop (version 3, designed extra for that school), and I must say our translators made it very fun for the students, and I think it was a success. After the workshop we went to talk with the principal for a while and then they showed us the school and as it was the break for the students, some of them were courageous enough to come talk to us and ask us for our email addresses etc.

After that day we were all pretty exhausted so every one just went home and slept until the next morning, where we had a big meeting with all the team members, but in the end we didn't do a lot of things, we just rehearsed some parts of the workshops and talked about new tasks and about the "Lead the Change Contest", that was all for Tuesday.

On Wednesday we had an other workshop, in an Australian international school, and we could see right at the entrance that it was a very wealthy private school, it looked more like a hotel to me ... But the director was very friendly and showed us the conference room where we would have the workshop (it was very big and made us feel professional!), and so we presented our workshop in front of around 80 to 90 students who were eleven to thirteen years old. It was very lively and the students participated very well, it was also Yusuke's first workshop so pretty exciting for him I think! In the afternoon we gathered in a supermarket near my home (and near the airport), to shop for the HIV-infected children of the shelter home we would be visiting on Saturday, with the money we had collected from our friends and families in Europe. We bought a lot of toys and books for them, but also a lot of useful things such as pens, pencils, paper, glue, scissors, english books, etc. and we'll see how they like all that!! We still have a lot of money left so we will buy the same things for an other shelter home, and if there's still something left, we will give the spare money to the directors of the shelter homes so that they can maybe take a day trip with the children, I think they will be very happy about that!! On that same evening, after the shopping, we all went to the airport where there were some other AIESEC members (the members of the intern supporting team), to pick up Jan (from Belgium), an other member of our "Living with HIV/AIDS" team.

Thursday was an other workshop day, in the International Highschool HCMC, but only in front of twenty to twenty-five students this time. The atmosphere was nicer this time, because we could feel closer to the students as they were a little older and there were fewer of them than the last couple of times. Myself, I couldn't present because I had lost my voice, I think it's because of the air-condition at night which makes a huge contrast with the heat during the day. So I was only in charge of the slides and I watched Khoa take my part. Now I'm already better as Xuan Minh's mother gave me a lot of things to drink and pills to swallow...

28th Day

Today was Carlijn's 22nd birthday and she was in a very bad mood, but it was very funny because all the attention was on her and every body was extra nice to her so she couldn't stay in that mood for very long! We woke up at about 10am and Melanie et her were both very hungover so it was too much for Carlijn to reed all those emails and sms!

For lunch we went to pizza hut (to have some European food for once!), and it was exactly what we needed. After that I still had to get some things for Carlijn's party so I only had a few hours at home to rest until I had to leave again at 4pm to pick up the birthday cake (not only for her, but also for two other AIESECers, Ai Thao and Noo, who had their birthdays on that week as well). We had told Carlijn that we would have a meeting at 5:30pm where we would discuss a lot of things (and obviously she wasn't looking forward to that!), but the real meeting time was at 5pm so that every thing would be ready for the surprise.

But I had some trouble on the road: First the taxi driver took a looong time to bring me to Ben Thanh Market (maybe he wanted to make more money, they often do that here), and then when I arrived at the bakery the cake wasn't ready, and then we were stuck in the traffic jam on the way to the coffee shop where we were all supposed to gather... But at the end I arrived at 5:15 and there was still plenty of time to prepare every thing, and when Carlijn arrived at 5:30 we were all ready and screamed SURPRISE when she entered the room.

It was a big success, and the two other birthday kids were also very pleased. They all said that they never had such a nice birthday, and Carlijn was very enthusiastic about the cake, she said "I never had such a big and beautiful cake for my birthday!!", so I was very happy that it went so well. Every body also gave a little speech, the atmosphere was very warm and I think we never felt so close to each other as a group. And also, it's always very fun to hang out with the AIESECers when we're not talking about the project, they are really fun people!! We also gave Carlijn a birthday card with some pictures of the team I had taken on the day before and every body had signed it, she was very happy about it too.

After the fake meeting, we all went to a karaoke bar (that's the favourite place most Vietnamese people like to go to when they go out, it's also the case for most Asian people in fact, I noticed that when I was in China last year). We had a room only for us and we sang a lot of songs as you could imagine, most of them in Vietnamese (hihi), but I have to say, some of our team members sing really well !! At about 9pm every body went home because we have a workshop tomorrow at 9am (the first one for me, I'm very excited!), and some of us were supposed to go pick up our new intern Yusuke (from Japan) at the airport, but at the end only Dung went, even if I had offered her to join...

On my way back I had to take a motorbike taxi,
and I had some trouble to understand what the man was saying when I was asking him how much money it would cost, and instead of showing me the price with his fingers, he would say a lot of things in vietnamese to me, and looking at me as if it should all make sense to me. So I called Xuan Minh and asked her to translate, but he didn't really want it because he liked the fact that it was all very confuse so that he could make me pay more money. After a while we agreed on 60'000 dong and it was quite all right to me (he asked for a hundred at the beginning), but then during the whole ride he was talking to me and again I couldn't understand a word he was saying, but this time even if I couldn't understand the words, I understood their meaning very clearly! (He was complaining about the fact that I was paying to little money and that he had to drive too far and that I should be glad because the taxis are a lot more expensive etc. and he was going on and on about it). And when he finally dropped me in front of the house he didn't want to accept my 60'000 dong and was pulling a long face, so that was just too much for me. I left the money on the motorbike and just went home. If he didn't want to take me then he simply shouldn't have agreed!! I guess he thought i was just a common tourist, but I'm far from that now!!