Lots of stuff and pictures

Well, the expedition has ended and we are back in Saigon for the last few days. I have not been up to par on my blogging as in past trips and I apologize. The schedule we kept was amazingly busy and by the time we returned from work, and had dinner, our heads would hit the pillow and that was the end.

It was a successful expedition, ending with all 350 catalyst sponsored kids from three provinces all coming with us to a 1 day 2 night "camp" at the beach. We had to give all of the kids Dramamine as they have never ridden in a vehicle before and the two hour ride to the beach made most of them sick. Not to mention that they had never been to a hotel or seen the ocean. The "garbage dump kids", (how I wish we had a different name for them) wanted nothing more than to stay in their rooms and take showers as they have never had a shower before. Our minds really can not wrap around what these kids were going through.

We had stations set up for the kids. I had the fun job of taking a Polaroid picture of each child, again many have never had a photo of themselves. Then they went to the frame station where they made a frame for their picture. We had a twister station, a mask making station, a nail station, and many more.

We made a "rope" out of people to section off part of the water and everyone went for a swim and of course these kids did not know how to swim so our nerves were shot fairly quickly but the smiles and squeals made it all worth while. The kids were wonderful and I finally have learned some Vietnamese that can be understood. The girls had a great time figuring out what I was trying to say, having a Hugh laugh, corrected me and then got so happy when I finally said it right. Now I am speaking a bit on the street and people understand.....

I am fairly certain that our family will be back for AE2008 and welcome anybody to join us. If you have ever considered any type of humanitarian efforts, this is a fantastic opportunity. We did end with a day yesterday just for the workers at a hot spring resort where we treated ourselves to $ 8.00/hour massages, foot rubs, Chinese herbal foot treatments, and much more. We had our farewell dinner and an auction. The catalyst sponsored kids each entered artwork into a contest which prizes of scholarships were awarded. The winning pictures were auctioned off and with emotions being so high, they had big price tags. the auction netted $5,000.00 from the volunteers which is to be used for 200 school scholarships for the boys who are now facing trafficking into Cambodia as the girls were in the past. The work never ends, but great progress is being made. We purchased a picture that Jesse wanted however unfortunately the picture Noah wanted went for $1,100.00....way out of our price range.

For more information and stuff that happened, you can check out other volunteers blogs. Click on my link to the catalyst blog and anybody who blogged on this trip has a link to their blog, I promise you will enjoy the reading.

The picture feature is not working so will add more later. I have about 350 pictures uploaded to Kodak gallery and if you would like to view them, E-mail me and I will send you the link.