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...