Last day of volunteering

Today was my last day of volunteering!  It was a good experience and I'm glad I did it, although there were some bumps along the way.  The main thing I'm happy about is that I won't ever have to walk down our dusty, muddy road and wait for the bus in the middle of a construction zone anymore. A few pics to commemorate my last day of bus riding/dusty road walking...

waiting for the bus, face mask on

Libby, Sandrine, Mike, and Camille....fellow busmates, waiting for the 201

bridge construction

construction

Peace House!

Giao Xuan - weekend workcamp

Background: Giao Xuan is a small town in Nam Dinh province, where the Red River empties into the South China Sea.  One of VPV's NGO programs focuses on Giao Xuan: they are trying to improve/maintain the fragile ecosystem while also promoting ecotourism in the area.  Part of the work is currently focusing on sending groups of students and volunteers to Giao Xuan for weekend workcamps, and that's what I did this past weekend! There were six foreign volunteers and about 12 Vietnamese volunteers, so it was a pretty big group.

Getting to Giao Xuan is a hellish five hour ordeal, over what is definitely the bumpiest road I've ever been on. The pic below was taken at the very beginning of the journey...the bus got a lot more crowded at each stop!

After arriving in Giao Xuan about 6 PM on Friday, we were divided into small groups and sent to our homestays.  After a quick walk around town, we all headed to one house for group dinner.  The rest of Friday night was spent playing icebreaker games and preparing materials for the weekend.

roomies 

Saturday was great, although I would have preferred waking up a little later - 6 AM on the weekend is just not my cup of tea.  We had breakfast, and the foreign volunteers had some free time while everyone else went out to collect the bikes we would use all day.  Around 8 AM we got on our bikes and started a tour of the village.  We also used the tour to hand out flyers advertising a town meeting we would be holding later that evening.  We stopped at a temple, the dyke that separates the town from the river delta, and the "beach" where there are hundreds of tiny stilt houses that fishermen live in.  On the way back from our tour we stopped at the only school in Giao Xuan to have a meeting with some of the students and sign them up for the new Giao Xuan environmental club.  

Saturday afternoon was supposed to be the main activity of the weekend - planting trees. And we did plant them, it's just that the things we planted barely qualify as trees. They were more like sticks with sprouts.  And the location was less than ideal - we planted them in this very grassy area where some trees had already been planted and a lot of them were dying.  So I'm not sure that our efforts will produce lasting results, but it was still great fun and all the Vietnamese students were so enthusiastic.  After planting "trees," we went on a leisurely bike ride through the countryside - my favorite part of the weekend.  This is exactly what I pictured myself doing in Vietnam, and it totally met my expectations.  The scenery was pretty, locals were friendly and the kids were always excited to see us. They would run after us shouting "hello! hello!" So cute. 

Sunday we held a town meeting to encourage locals to be more environmentally responsible, and raise awareness about the ecotourism project. Since it was all in Vietnamese I'm not totally sure what went on, but there was a skit, speeches, interactive games, a video and lots of singing. Basically the message was "take pride in your town and don't litter everywhere because it harms the environment and tourists won't want to visit."  The foreign volunteers participated in a few activities, including a very unharmonious rendition of Michael Jackson's "We Are the World."  After the meeting we went back to my homestay where we had an amazing lunch along with some incredibly strong home-made rice wine offered (read: forced upon us) by one of the locals.  Then it was back on the bus for the long ride back to Hanoi!

While Giao Xuan was neither the prettiest nor the most interesting place I've been (although it was both pretty and interesting), it was by far the most authentic.  There are still very few tourists so the town and the locals remain quintessentially Vietnamese.  That is to say, there are no ventures that specifically target tourists, and the locals don't try to hawk their goods because they have nothing out of the ordinary to sell.  I liked that a lot.  If this ecotourism project succeeds, I hope Giao Xuan is able to retain its culture and attitude or, in my opinion, the best part of Giao Xuan will be lost.  

ready to ride!

quick break

stilt houses

peace

Vietnamese pride

biking the countryside

high tide

singing "We are the World"

A semblance of normalcy, and adventures in taking the bus

I haven't blogged as much recently because there hasn't been much to say.  After three weeks at E&C Center, I finally feel like I've started to gain a regular daily pattern. That doesn't mean I'm used to the terrifying traffic or the constant noise, but it doesn't phase me as much as it used to. This past week I finally started to make some real progress at work.  I submitted some initial inquiries for grant applications, and finished translating some documents into English. Today is my last day of work for two weeks because of the Tet holiday, but I still plan on doing a little bit of work while traveling.

The worst part of the day is taking the bus home.  In the morning I get off at a major bus stop where lots of people get off and more people get on, so I never have to worry about the bus not stopping.  However, coming home is a different story. First of all, I take Bus #201, but there are two #201s and only one of them goes to my street. So every day I have to ask the money collector if the bus goes to Tay Mo. Sometimes I get a definitive "yes," but other times the guy just sort of grunts or ignores the question altogether.  Those are the bus rides I hate, and I'm incredibly tense until I figure out whether or not it's going towards my stop.  Luckily I've always gotten on the correct #201, or I've realized early enough that I was on the wrong #201 and had time to get off and transfer buses.   I just figured out a few days ago how to tell the difference between them, so now that part will be easier.  But there's a second part to the bus ride home: making sure the bus actually stops at my stop.  I get off at the crossroads of a major highway and the small street my dorm is on.  There is no sign, the bus driver only stops if someone yells at him to stop. I tried yelling in English a few times, but he just completely ignores me. So now I try to make sure the money collector knows I need to get off at Tay Mo, and he will usually tell the bus driver to stop (and I use the word "stop" lightly...the bus doesn't actually come to a halt, it just slows down and you jump off). Then there's just the ten minute walk down our one-lane dirt road with no sidewalks and tons of trucks and motorbikes driving by in both directions, and I'm back at the dorm! It's always such a relief to walk to through the gates of Coma 6 alive and unharmed.

                   View of the road from the roof of Peace House

                                          Coma 6!