Will update when we get a chance. Sorry, fell asleep at 10:00 before I could finish all our days at the village. No internet the next day and a half unless at our lunch stop, so will try later.
By day two, the girls home stays still had not figured out that the boys had the only toilet in the village. Some also decided to skip the cold water bucket 'shower' for wet wipes instead. We put in over 10 hours of work today with a half hour for lunch and three screaming teachers everytime the water break lasted longer then five minutes. We were on a very tight schedule and had a lot of work to do. We started off the day by hiking around surrounding villages and getting a sense of the minority villages of mainly black and white thai people. In the afternoon we arrived at our worksite. After meeting our contract workers, we were instucted to move all the fill that was taken out for the foundation back into the building site as well as moving bricks. The result was four hours of backbreaking lifting and digging. Upon arrival at the village we split into three home stay groups and had an excellent village meal by our three 'white thai' village cooks. The first night was a bit of a 'wake-up' call literally for the students as apparently roosters in Vietnam start cock a doodle doo at 1:00 in the morning. The roosters continue till 6:00, just in time for the village community cultural centre to start blasting the news of the day. Work starts early as people went to the rice paddies before we woke-up at 6:30. The village is one of the poorest in the region as they only get one crop of rice per year as others have two. In Vietnam as well as many other countries, you can tell areas that have been visited by many tourists by the amount of 'hellos' you get or children asking for gifts, or tacky tourists stalls. The answer to all those in the village is no. This is real traveling... Back in Hanoi and everyone is doing well. Just got into the Hotel. Will update soon... Well we are officially off now to the village. The students learnt how to cross the road today which is a little different than in Canada. Take five lanes of scooters and throw in some cars, taxis, trucks and ladies carrying market items and cross the road as all of them are speeding at you. They all survived and will be a valuable tool for the rest of the trip. We also had a rickshaw ride through old town and a visit to the temple of literature where the students learnt some Vietnamese history and that you need some dong bills for toilets sometimes :). A few got up early for a nice walk around the hotel. Others enjoyed bacon, fruit and other fresh pho for breakfast. After a very very very long day that exceeded 30 hours, all the students had a wonderful Vietnamese dinner and are now fast asleep. Tomorrow we have a lake run for those brave enough to get up at 6:00 with Ms. 'Moennick and Mr. McCallum followed by a museum visit , rickshaw tour and a 4-5 hour bus ride to our village home stay close to mai Chau. We do not know how good or if there is any current internet connection so this may be the last post for a while. All kids are doing well but naturally very tired! |