First day volunteering yesterday and was a bit aprehensive about what I was going to be doing, how I was getting there and pretty much everything about it! appently everyone has very little english and was starting to dread it a small bit.
Couldn't sleep altough that wasn't helped by some housemates up drinking til 3 in the morning as they were off Monday. Due to be leaving house at 8.10am so an early start, Phoung collected me and dropped me at the meeting point with Dr Hang (meeting point was bascially on the side of the motorway!!). Waited there for about 20mins and finally was collected. It appeared they were looking for me on the other road beside it and when they tried ringing me the number wasn't working (Turned out the number on the sim card wasn't the correct number). Hopped in the car and left centre to go out into the countryside about 30km outside Hanoi to the centre called Lucky Duck.
The centre has two aspects, so there is the centre for children with autism and then there is a kindergarten for mainstream children. At present in Vietnam children with special needs are not intergrated into mainstream education and this is something that Dr Ha is trying to achieve. The morning consited of sitting in on a meeting with the head of education and head of kindergarten in Hanoi and Dr Ha. To be honest I hadn't a clue what was going on as most of the time they were all speaking in Vietnamese but I was continuously filled up with Green Tea, then a really nice sweet coffee and more green tea.
The centre is going to be great, mostly finished but there is still some construction going on, will take some pictures next week and add them to this as forgot the camera on Monday. There is a large play area outside with slides and climbing frames etc, inside there are lots of different rooms where different activities take place. They have a classroom where i was informed i could teach english in but will be after tet. That will be interesting as ive never intended to be teaching english but we'll give it a go.
I then met one of the teachers who has some english (thank god) and she explained to me what the different rooms were for etc. We then had some lunch where I was speaking english and letting the teachers practice theres. It was a lot of fun.
The kids are very cute and in the afternoon I attended the drawing and colouring group and one of the kids coloured a picture and gave it to me, was very sweet. The rest of the afternoon was pretty similiar with me teaching the teachers some english and letting them practice pronounciation of different things. They then tried to teach me some Vietnamese that i was able to pronounce but forgot straight away what I had said.
