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!