The Cast and the Crew

I can't believe it took me this long to talk about the wonderful staff of Solidarites Jeunesses Vietnam (SJ Vietnam). I think as a tourist with no previous knowledge of Vietnam or the language, I think volunteering is the best thing I could have done in a foreign place because the local volunteers know places and introduce me to other people.

I already might have mentioned a few of them but not in great detail that they deserve..The Staff includes:

Duc: He is our main Fearless Leader. He's so happy and eager to help with anything. He's friendly and very personable. Duc takes care of everyone and we're always calling him if we need help, which mostly just involves us finding our keys. And we give him a hard time about his girlfriend..

This is him falling asleep in like 2 seconds of getting on the bus after a long hard day of taking care of us.

Nam: He's almost like a Peter Pan. He's 24 but he'll never grow up, but in a good way. He has this youthful carefree spirit about him that always makes him laugh..which gets kind of weird sometimes. Seriously, he's always laughing, but the funniest thing is that sometimes he does strange things like falling on the floor or sitting on the chair strangely that I joke with the other volunteers that aren't as close to him that he's actually part of the disabled center. I look over at him to say something and sometimes even I get confused with my own joke and think he's slightly not quite right.... just kidding. We joke and mess around with each other a lot. I like to think he's my older brother who needs special help.

Two best friends

Then there's Phuc who is the director of SJV and she is one classy lady who can make a mean fruit shake.


This week has been a week of goodbyes.The Scottie mama left yesterday and the cool Aussie left this morning and tomorrow another girl is leaving. It's strange that even with all these people leaving this apartment is packed. As opposed to the French invasion last week, we have an Australian wave of 7 people. I've been having fun meeting so many cool people. So today we had the ceremony for the kitchen we built and got to see it in use. The stakeholders who are just really old ladies were there. OH MY GOODNESS IT IS SO FREAKING HOT LIKE MY FACE IS SWEATING UNTO ITSELF. To cool off, the volunteers are going to a water park tomorrow and then next stop..Sapa!!