Fish Sauce

well, today we went to the three orphanages we have been working at for the past three months in order to say goodbye. It was neat to see the kids. We took fruit, some gingerbreak bikkies that Ange had made, a picture book for some of the kids and some clothes as well.

It was not easy to say goodbye. Especially when one of the mothers gave me a 'nasty' look when she was told we were leaving tomorrow. She's a lovely mother but her guilt trip worked wonders on my emotions.

There were quite a number of kids from the Home of Affection who were actually visiting family for the day (as today was a public holiday - mid year lunar holiday). So we missed out on saying goodbye to them.

I have some photos to add, but the site is messing me around.

Thankyou to all of you for your support and prayers and encouragement and emails and money and advice and ideas and assistance that was sent our way to help us get here and to help the kids. We are thankful indeed.

goodbye social support

goodbye home of affection

goodbye baby orphanage

yes, less than a week here now in Tam Ky. We are busy trying to fit everything we want to in our last days here.

It's been quite hectic the past week or two. There have been two outings (using money received from peeps back home and from other volunteers also raising money). We took the Baby Orphanage kids out to the local gaming room (a Vietnamese version of 'Time-Out'). After about an hour there we took them to the local mall where they had dinner at the food court. Chicken and rice and veges! yum. Folllowed by fruit salad (provided by Ange of course). Then yesterday we took the Home of Affection kids to the local amusement park, followed by the local swimming pool, and then the local noodle house. BIG smiles on the kids faces and good fun busy times.

Just so you NZ guys know, we arrive in wellington airport at 2:30pm on wednesday the 11th of June. We are flying from Singapore where we are staying the night.

Finally I can add some more photos, so here you go. See you all soon.

harvesting the rice. This happened over a month ago already and the fields now are starting to look green again with new rice growing.

sleeping on the job...

our young friend 'little budda'

playing with some new toys

more new toys

we went to Sapa for a couple of days and did an overnight trek. It's 3000 feet up from the lowlands so quite cooler than what we were used too, but some beautiful views.

rice paddies in Sapa. Sapa is 10 hours north of Hanoi by sleeper train. It's very close to the China border.

lucy with some ladies in sapa. They follow you on the trek trying to sell you jewellery, clothing, mats etc.

lucy trekking with the local kids. note the steep drop off next to where she is walking. A real trooper.

father and daughter

we bought some new shoes for the Home of Affection kids

he likes his new shoes

and young lads showing their skipping skills

we have been and visited this site a few times. This is by far the most heartrenching place i have been to in vietnam. I cant help crying when i see the people here.

Okay its like a big community and has different wings, the baby orphan rooms, the disabled children and agent orange affected wing, street people (the Danang police to round up and dump them at the centre) and the elderly peoples wing.

The disabled children often have hole cut out of there clothes so they can be tyed to the side of there cots easyer (they don't tend to do this while the volunteers are there. they know it upsets us.) but you can see the ropes that they use tied to the sides of the beds and such. The disabled children just sit in cots and the urine just pools underneath... it's so sad.

the elderly peoples room (about 8 people in one room) is hard to walk into because of the smell -the whole place stinks of urine, it seems to just choke you and you have trouble breathing. The girl showing us around pointed out the man in the corner as dying of TB. everyone here looked so sad, i couldn't make my self photograph them. I left in tears.

Lucy is 3 1/2 yrs old
To is 7yrs old

lucy weighs 17kg
To wieghs 10 kg

To's mother died when he was born , he is from one of the ethnic hill tribes, he came to the orphanage with his two older sisters when he was a new born because his father couldn't look after them . To is serverly mulnunished and it looks as though it has stunted his growth. He is super hyperactive though!!

hello everyone. I still can't add more photos sorry. If you are on Facebook, then look at my photo albums to see some new pics there.

Well, only two more weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing you all back in NZ and showing you loads of photos and telling many a story. But it's not going to be easy to say good bye here.

The kids here are great. It's fun playing with them and I have enjoyed spending more time with the babies now there are more volunteers this month.

Bye for now...

it's been a while since I did an update. We have been busy. We have new volunteers with us now. Four Canadians and one from the US of the A. After working with Aussies, Canadians and American's and being around Vietnamese for over two months, I fear that my NZ accent is diminishing in it's beauty. I now talk about flip-flops (instead of Jandals), swimming clothes (instead of togs) and my pronunciation of the word 'six' is now dubious. It's easier to use these 'other words' to avoid confusion, however, each 'wrong' word said strikes a blow to my inner Kiwi. So please, when I arrive home, please don't judge me for the words I speak or the way in which I say them.

With all the new volunteers, I have taken the opportunity to spend a bit less time playing with the older kids at the Baby Orphanage and spend some more time in the baby rooms with the little little ones. I'd like to tell you all that it's great seeing Ange with these youngsters. She has a real love for the little ones and while I think they all look alike at that age, she knows each of their names and some of their personalities. I think she won't find it easy to say goodbye when the day comes. So the past few times we have been at the Baby Orphanage I have averaged getting two littlies to sleep in my arms each time. Not a bad effort if I may say so myself. That statistic goes along with an average of being peeed on and puked on at least once. It's worth it. I still can't understand how a parent(s) could leave a child. I know there are many different reasons why these kids are there, but it still does not make sense sometimes.

Apparently we have used our monthly limit for photo space so I can't add any more photos for a while. Apologies for that. I have a heap I want to add tot he site. You'll have to be patient.

We continue to recieve funds from friends back in NZ to spend on the kids. THANKYOU! The other week we bought a whole heap of new toys for the Social Support centre and the kids were rapt. The kids are noticably healthier now than a couple of months ago. It's great to see smiley healthy faces.

right, it's late and it's time for bed. Sorry again for no photos. I'll have a chat with Mr Gates and see what we can arrange.

Hello again, some more pics. This time of a little tour we did last saturday when we were in Hoi An for the weekend. We took a day trip to Cham Island (1 hour 40mins one way in an old wooden ferry with about 45 others).

it's obviously a fishing village.

a quaint little place. The electricity here is often non-existent.

a local house. Simple yet homely.

a local girl just watching us all walk by.

the local butcher.

if you don't want the sun to come into your house, it's best to use your duvet.

a nice pic of lucy next to some loverly flowers.

this is the sign that was on our boat that took us too and from the island. Try and make sense of it. I could only figure out some of it, the rest had us guessing.

and here are some more pics of the kids. Yes, we don't just trip around holidaying, we also work at the orphanages! These were taken the same day we did the 2nd evening meal for the kids last week on wednesday.

Lucy and Tau.

Chan looking forward to the eats.

Ange doing the female thing of multitasking.

yum yum!

Our cook Mrs Hanh was helping to feed this girl who has cerebal palsy.

chow time!

and finally a pic of Lucy and Mrs Hanh out having ice cream and tea. Who would have thought that Lucy would like ice cream!!??

Hi there everybody. Finally after many promises of pics, here are some for you!

this is the loverly lake where we had a picnic with some of the adult 'students' I teach at the Economic Zone. The lake was very Lake Taupo-esq.

this is the restaurant and picnic area at the Phu Nanh lake (pronounced Fu Nan (did you know there is no 'F' or 'G' in the Vietnamese alphabet?)).

From left, Ange, Miss Yen, Mr Than, Mr Trung, sorry but I can't remember the name of this next man, Mr Bao and Lucy.

Captain Lucy steering the boat to our picnic destination.

the crew at the lake

this came with us on the boat... it's compulsory to take beer with you to a picnic. Of course, it's 35 degrees and there are no chilly-bins and no one brings ice so we had to cool them in the stream (which chilled them a large 1degrees.

a group photo at the top of the lake.

and a nice whanau shot at the top of the lake.

the other week I ate frog for the first time. It's delicious, although there ain't much meat on them bones. It's a delicacy here in Vietnam.

this is me at the local beach near Tam Ky. I now have the best tan I've ever had and we are only half way through our time here!

lucy makes friends everywhere she goes these days. This girl is probably twice the age of Lucy but she was very very skinny.