Still Having Fun, May, 2006 (letters home)

Last monday we got our new set of volunteers, we had one girl, Claudine, leave our placement and go to new one on Cham Island. We are very sad about this because she was a great volunteer and was doing great things with her class but I know she will do great things in her new placement, and we still see her on the weekends.  We got one new boy from England who just came from a 7 month stay in the Phillipeans doing volunteer work and we got one new girl from Singapore, who will start working on her masters degree in the states after this project.  They are both very nice people.
 
Last week I was asked to start teaching a two hour sign language class twice a week at the day center. I have now done two lessons, the first one was a bit difficult, but after correcting my original mistakes I was able to have a successful second lesson.  What is most difficult is that a few of the students I am teaching have no sign and no Vietnamese language.  So even if I learn the Vietnamese word for what I am teaching it does not help because they still do not know what I am talking about. Two of my students have well developed sign and I feel bad because I need to keep the class at a very basic level, but they seem to be having an okay time helping their peers.  If anyone has any information on teaching sign to those who don't have developed language skills I would greatly appriciate any suggestions.
 
Last weekend we went out to Karaoke again with all of our Vietnamese family and had lots of fun. We were there for like 5 hours, but it did not feel like it.
On Sunday Chelsea and I were invited to go with our new friend Chan from bread of life to go to his home town in the country.  It was about an hour motorbike ride from Da Nang.  I rode on Chan's motorbike, and Chelsea rented a motorbike taxi to take her there.  It was a beautiful ride, the hour just flew by cause there were so many new things to look at.  We went to his house and got to meet his mother, grandmother, aunt, sister, brother in law and nephew .  Since we do not speak very good Vietnamese we were not able to communicate to well with any of them, any time we would say something in Vietnamese they would shake their head no.  His family had very minimum sign skills but they seemed to get along just fine.  Chan did not begin to learn sign until he was 14 when he went of to a special school.  Him and his family would write anything down that they needed to.
We had a delicious meal and then drove home.  It was a great day and a wonderful way to see another part of Vietnam.
 
This week we got the ball pit that we paid for with all of your donated money!  It is a lot of fun and the children really enjoy it.  One little girl didn't know what to do and ended up sinking down til all you could see was her face burried in the balls.  It was an amusing site and we all had to laugh for a minute when we noticed it before we could help her.  I put my hand out so she could grab it, after a few seconds she slowly reached her had up to grab mine.  Her _expression was priceless.
 
This weekend we will be going out to a park for a party with all the staff from the Da Nang redcross on friday.  On Saturday we might head back to Hoi An again so we can see Claudine and on Sunday we will go to the movies with Chan, his favorites are Korean films, it should be an interesting experience, since I will not understand the language, but I assume it will still be entertaining.
 
Still having fun,
Stella

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