Our Proposal

Dear friends and family,

I am developing an educational sector for the disabled children's daycare in Vietnam and asking for help in gathering school supplies. Ben ( another volunteer), Xuong ( a Speech pathologist at the hospital) and I, are working together to establish better means of communication between the staff, children, and volunteers. Many of the children at the daycare are suffering from Cerebral Palsy, Autism, and other neurological disorders and/or developmental delay that hinder them from going to a typical Vietnamese school. These children are very bright and have a lot of potential but their circumstances don't allow them to reach their full potential. The daycare provides very little stimulation to help these children learn, communicate, and become self-sufficient individuals. Therefore, we are working create our own mini-school to stimulate the minds of these bright individuals. To do this though, we need your help.

I have included pictures and descriptions of the current daycare, and then examples of what we are going to create ( modeled after an Australian kindergarten classroom).

I have been extremely blessed to have the support of my friends and family that helped me raise over $2,000 to sponsor my trip to Vietnam. I was shocked to hear that people were still asking to help!!! Since I've had many people express their continued desire to help,  I believe that donating craft supplies and toys are the best means of helping us establish this school.

supplies: notebooks, pencils, crafts, construction paper, Velcro. Money for laminating costs ect, to help construct "key-word sign" booklets that the children can use to communicate via pictures and sign language.
and toys: dollhouse figurines or characters to encourage imagination and role play, mesh balls and textured objects and/or books for sensory integration, blocks to improve fine motor skills, and tissue paper for craft projects.

I am taking a short visit home, to Rochester--yippie :), and will be collecting donations to help reduce any shipping costs. If you would like to contribute, please contact me via 585-747-6811 between September to October and I will personally pick the supplies up or you can send them to my home address 54 Hillbridge Circle, Rochester NY 14612.
Thank you for all of your support:)

Random Pictures from the past two months

Ho Chi Minh City during sunset. Saigon đẹp lâm. 

The City. Luckily there is not much traffic

Washing my hands under a bamboo pipe at the Cu Chi Tunnels.

A Cu Chi tunnel hut in the background. Used these huts in the Vietnam War

Volunteers and Vietnamese local students spending a night sitting out at the park

Mid-Autumn Festival or the Full Moon Festival. It's a holiday that follows an old Vietnamese tale about how the man-in-the-moon came to be. The festival celebrates by eating Moon Cake and giving out presents to the children. We celebrated the festival by giving out candy to the children and attending a show at our coordinator's church. 

NY bound

Hello everyone,

New York here I come! Thank you mom and dad for allowing me to visit home for 10 days :)

I'm currently traveling on a plane that is taking me from Dubois to JFK--- a 13 and a half plane ride that succeed the 7 hour flight from Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh. :x I  slept the first 7 and a half hours in but now I can't force myself asleep any longer. Traveling so far has been pretty in uneventful which I guess is a good thing :p

I'm becoming excited to sleep in a comfortable bed again for a little bit because the beds at our placement consist of an inch-thick mattress on a wooden board lol and I'm excited to eat a dinner that doesn't consist of rice, vegetables and tofu. Most importantly though, I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family.

It was surprisingly harder than I thought to wave goodbye to Vietnam for 2 weeks. Despite the rough beginning, I have begun to think of HCM as a second home-- a place that will always stay in my heart. I remember the first time traveling from the HCM airport to my university, frightened by the chaotic streets that were full of zigzagging motorbikes, street vendors, and foreigners. I was so uneasy that I had Chris keep me on Skype while I slept :) and he comforted almost everyday for a week when I woke up with tears in my eyes.

Now, I love the busy streets and riding on the motorbikes :) I've walked the streets every morning and wave to the locals who greet us daily with "hello!hello!" (Sometimes I'll even bring them some pastries or muffins from the bakery). The foreignness of streets and the local people that once frightened me-- are now some of my dearest friends.

So, even though I am excited to make a trip home-- I am also looking forward to returning back to Vietnam ( My coordinator was afraid that I wouldn't return and said that she would attack my Facebook if I didn't come back to Vietnam in 2 weeks hahah but I assured her that there are a lot of things I still have planned in Vietnam and there are people I love too much to not go back :p)

5 hours left before I step back into the States :)

Winning a karaoke contest

Hello again,

 The project I've been developing in the disabled care center is finally starting to show some progress. I have been busy preparing materials and ideas that we are pitching to the hospital director this Wednesday. Ben and I made name-tags for all of the children and fastened them to a bookshelf so each child has a cubby that they can put their book bags and notebooks into. I don't have picture yet, but will post them ASAP so you can see our progress. We also created a timetable and/or a schedule  that we are printing tomorrow that uses "key-word sign" to describe different activities that will be taking place every day. All of the pictures (based off of an Australian educational project ) are fastened via velcro so the children can take off the finished activities to show how the day progresses.  Most of the children at the daycare center rely on routine this schedule will enable them to tell/sign/ interact with the new volunteers on a different level.

Finally, we are almost finished creating a bio folder for one of the children. Here we have included his name, age, birthday, family picture, likes/dislikes, symptoms and facts about his genetic disorder, and finally a list of picture words that he can use to communicate with other volunteers. For instance, he loves doing puzzles and taking photographs so we made sure to include those " key-word sign" pictures. He can  also be aggressive toward other children so we made a list of picture commands that the volunteers can use to help him understand that what he is doing hurts the other children. Most of my pictures are on another computer but I will try to upload them soon so you can have a better idea of what these bio folders look like.

Here's a quick recap of my weekend before my head hits the pillow :)

On Saturday I managed to meet a group of Vietnamese students that took me on their motorbikes to create keychains to give out in an orphanage around Christmas. We cut, designed, tanned, and glossed tongue depressors while exchanging phrases of broken English and Vietnamese. Man, language barriers can be exhausting.

Sunday I helped out at an English Speaking Club where local Vietnamese  congregate to learn and improve their language speaking skills. They were thrilled to have a native speaker there and I was even peer-pressured into singing a Taylor Swift duet in their Karaoke room ( Singing Karaoke is surprisingly a great way to learn English pronunciation)!!! I've never been one to enjoy the spotlight so this experience definitely pushed me to step out of my comfort zone yet again.

After the English Club, my new friends and I walked to church to catch the last few minutes of mass and then went to to a bowling alley. One of the guys had never bowled before so I treated them to a game. We had such an incredible time and I couldn't stop laughing.

So anyways, it's about 11pm and I have an early morning so I'm going to call it quits. I miss all of you like crazy and Im excited to see you guys again soon!

My Mission at the Disabled Daycare

Hello again,

I've just finished up my first month here and it's finally beginning to feel a little more like home. People come and people go--I've met so many volunteers from all over the world...Australia, Japan, China, New York, Canada, England ect. Most volunteers only stay several weeks so I am constantly meeting new faces at the expense of saying goodbyes almost every weekend. However, there are two volunteers here Ben and Meghan who are saying for several months. We share many of the same ambitions, goals, and morals; making it comforting to have some source of consistency. 

As I mentioned before, I have met up with one of the speech pathologists at the hospital who is helping me establish an educational environment for the disabled daycare. First, we are making all of the children ID nametags to place their bookbags and notebooks that we are going to create for them. Each notebook will contain a biography about the child's strengths and weaknesses, their family history, mental disability, and 2013 goals. This will help volunteers understand a child better in the couple weeks that they have to work with them. Since many volunteers only say for a short period of time---they aren't able to understand and work with a child properly. By creating children biographies, the volunteers will be able to call each child by name and know how to enhance their learning and development.

Most of these children have some sort of cerebral palsy, a condition in which there is brain damage in the area the connects the frontal cortex to the motor cortex. This damage usually occurs in pregnancy and/or early infant development, causing the child to have paralysis and/or uncontrolled motor movements. They also have speech problems and delayed learning. However, they are smart individuals with a lot of unchallenged potential. For instance, Duoy, the last boy in my pictures, is extremely intelligent and taught himself English just through interacting with our volunteers. I don't have a strong academic background in child development and/or working with the handicapped. However, this is what my trip is about right? Establishing something outside of my comfort zone. 

Here are some of the children that I am creating biographies for: 

A secret visit to the orphanage

Hello again, 

Today ( September 12th)'s  entry will be much shorter I promise. Several of our volunteers went to the orphanage this morning to visit even though some of the kids are still getting over being sick (Don't worry--- they are no longer contagious). The orphanage houses about 20-30 children whose ages range from 2-15. They are absolutely precious. It is very hard to go into the home because the living conditions are very rough. Children go to the bathroom and their wastes are left on the floor for the older girls to clean up. They kids often wear the same clothes all week, even though the orphanage has heeps of new clothes in the courner.

I previously learned in my Anthropology class that you cannot look poorly towards other customs that are not practiced in the states. Yes, I believe that these children are neglected but Ive had to remind myself that hygiene is not stressed as much in Vietnam than it is in the states. 

Our volunteers bring games and craft supplies to the children. When you walk into the room, they jump all over you and are extremely eager to play with the gifts that we bring them. Today we brought rackets to play batmitton with, molding clay, and coloring pages. I met a young 15-year old girl today, her name was Phoung. She was very intelligent and we were able to communicate through broken phrases that combined English and Vietnamese. She even asked me what I thought about the war in Syria! I was very impressed by her intelligence and social awareness. 

We left the orphanage around 11:30 PM and took a "bus" home. I showered twice and then walked to the hospital. I have become very close with the PT department over here which has been teaching me about the therapies that they use with patiences having different neurological problems---mostly due to a motorbike accident or a stroke. 

Say hello to some of the most beautiful children you will even meet: 

The First Month

Hello Everyone,

I've decided to set up my first blog to help keep everyone updated in my travels. I would still like to continue writing letters but felt that writing a blog will enable me to share more of experiences with you!

My experiences in Vietnam have definitely helped me grow as an individual. The first few weeks being in a foreign country were very hard because I felt that I did not have the opportunities available to me that I expected when I first signed up. The communication barrier was extremely tough because I was not able to express what I wanted to do with the staff and was therefore worried I would not be getting much out of this trip. However, over the past three weeks I have found the balance between patience and taking initiative.

Learning patience:  Unlike the US, Vietnam houses less foreigners outside the main "backpackers district." Our volunteer agency sticks out like a sore thumb---all of the Vietnamese women are very small and petite so I look and feel like a giant compared to them ( a 6-foot tall woman recently joined the volunteer program and everyyyyone stares at her like she a tourist attraction haha). We are put at a disadvantage because we look like outsiders and cannot speak Vietnamese very well---it is a very tonal language so speaking phrases properly is hard. Therefore, I could not easily communicate with the staff at the hospital, disabled daycare, and the orphanage to explain to them what I wanted to get out of this volunteer experience.

However, I found other ways to show the staff that I was interested. For an example, I spent 4 hours learning Chinese Chess one afternoon with the nurses and doctors ( without speaking the same language) and because the staff started to trust and see my eagerness to learn---I was able to scrub-in and learn how to stitch-up a patient!!! Since then, I've been able to participate and learn from a lot of the procedures. I've also set up 5 Vietnamese lessons/week to help me improve my speaking skills.

Taking initiative:  I was learning a lot in the OR but I wanted to do more. My purpose for coming over here was not just to learn--but to also give back to the community and establish something. My first plan was to work at the orphanage in the morning and then visit the hospital in the afternoons. However, God threw me into another direction. One of the volunteers contracted scabies and we were not allowed back with the children for at least a month. There went my plan!

However, after talking to some of the coordinators here-- I set myself up with a Speech Pathologist who knew some English. I told her that I came to Vietnam with the notion of establishing something over here that can impact the local community.  & guess what--under her guidance, I am setting up a school for the disabled children's daycare!!

Here is my proposed objective:  To establish a learning environment for the disabled daycare center that focuses on strenghtening communication between volunteers, staff, and children through pictorial and sign languages. Better communicatin will help enrich learning of children to help them become more independent and self-suffient individuals. 

I have already written a proposal but will explain more of that in my next blog because my hands are starting to cramp =) 

Love you & miss you guys back in the states!

Me in the O.R: