Blogging Lyndsay, Dallas, Andrew, Mitch, and Hailey

Student: Lyndsay
School: Port Colborne S.S

Today was my first full day of work at the build site without getting sick! I would have liked to participate more in the building of the house, because I have mainly just been pulling nails out of old wood. But today I got to tamp for a bit, and smash pieces of brick and stone (not that I did much damage). My home sick feeling was better today. I bought the kids at our build site some toys. They were SO happy, it made my day and it made theirs to bounce the balls off my head. So we are going to head out and eat, do some activities, then finally BED! I hope everything’s okay at home and everyone’s healthy and happy. I’ll be home soon, always in my prayers.
Much Love,
Lyndsay
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Student: Dallas
School: Fort Erie S.S

I am still loving everything about the experience I am having. Today we got to meet more kids and we renamed them. Bob is so attached to me, he is about five years old, so cute. Today at the site, we mainly worked on the floor and some people did bricklaying. Inside one of the houses, it was 38 degrees Celsius, so just think how hot it is shoveling sand and dirt, then bringing it to the house. It’s 5:30 and we are about to get ready to go out for dinner.
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Student: Andrew
School: A.N Myer S.S

Today was another productive day for the “Eh” team, even though it was really warm. Paul and I continued laying brick through the duration of the day as we did yesterday. The house is actually starting to look like a building since we have wall sections built around most of the exterior of the house. Tomorrow will be much of the same with more work being completed on the floor and the walls. At the end of the day our construction supervisor said tomorrow is supposed to feel like 43 or 44 degrees Celsius with the humid, so it will probably slow our progress down, but it shouldn’t be too bad with our trusty lunch and we grabbed two tarps that were hung for shade over our build site. I can’t believe we only have tomorrow left to build, and then the closing ceremony is Friday, it’s gone by so fast. We fly out of HCMC in just 3 days!!! It is unbelievable how just time flies when you’re busy. Any who, I miss you all at home, and I will see you soon enough.
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Student: Mitch
School: Centennial S.S

Work here is going well, we are all giving a lot of sweat, determination, and most importantly, effort. The children here love us, and enjoy playing with us during our breaks (stuff like soccer, Frisbee, and hacky sac). Due to the fact that we don’t know their names, we decided to give them some, so far we have; Hip Hop, Kwan, Ringo, Star, Betty, Veronica, Barrack Obama, Fernando, Bob, Guisseppe, and Duke (because he follows me around and stares )- there were at least 20 kids. One last thing, we eat a lot of fish and fruit here; dragon fruit, Asian pear, pine apple, and lady finger bananas, but today I had the most amazing fruit called ‘mangosteen’… SO good! Any who, have fun, I’ll see you soon and I love you.

Mitchy-Moo (jokes)
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Student: Hailey
School: Westlane S.S

Good news, I am not as tired today as I was yesterday night, so hooray, I can blog at least half-decent.

It’s funny how my tone changes when I start speaking Vietnamese… and to be quite honest with everyone, I have no idea why… to be polite perhaps? Just thought I’d get that out of the way for all my DSBNi team members. Also (just for the record), our team name is The Dominators, not The Denominators.

My Tho is a very nice city. If I could, I would live here for the rest of my life. When it rained today, I did not care if I was going to get wet or not, (laugh) if you seen those kids, you would care less about the rain as well. They were taking mud baths and making little mud pies - even if their butt cheeks were falling out of their pants – it was hilarious to watch.

Lunch time is always entertaining on the build. While everyone is resting from long, hard hours of work, the few of us stay awake to play a Vietnamese card game called Tien Len (or Thirteen in English), of which I taught them. Although they may think they’re terrible at it, they’re actually good. It all depends on strategy, luck, and if you’re risky to make ‘the next move’.

The build looks amazing and surely went by fast today. We almost have all the walls layered with bricks, our team members are working hard on tamping the floor, and the local people are now in process of working on the roof. Also, painting window shutters is fun; you guys should try it sometime if you haven’t already – make sure you use translucent and fluid gray paint.

P.S. It’s depressing how this experience will soon be over.