We visit a local bookstore in the village to purchase clay and whiteboards for an arts and crafts activity and a conversational English activity for the day. There is no need to teach the kids to create using clay! Creativity is something that is in them, naturally.
In fact, a few girls even taught me how to create a ribbon-detailed hat. Concentrated in their art work, the children spent the entire morning making clay creations and brought their artwork home to their families.
Once the children finished with their clay creations, an English conversation activity was held with the children on the whiteboard. The children already knows how to say common English phrases like “how old are you” and “where are you from.” With the whiteboards, we taught the kids how to write and read the conversation English phrases. We also integrated Vietnamese language in the lesson and translated from Vietnamese to English. There was no structured instruction, but the children still were involved and interested in the small activity.
At a different location, there is another compassion house being built in the village, so at the location we are working on there was only two local workers with us. There was a slight mishap where the wooden plank-metal bars structure fell through, and Trung scrapped his elbow as he has assisting the men on the structure while it fell through. Everyone turned out to be okay, and the workers ensured that the structure was stable before we continued working on the house. The ground duties included shuttling bricks to and from site, cement mixing, and reloading supply of bricks and cement for the workers. The walls inside the house have already been formed, but it’s fragile. We had to be careful of not bumping into the walls while going in and around the house as we reloaded the supplies. Most of the modern houses in Vietnam have slanted ceilings since it rains at lot in the country, and this compassion house has this architecture.
Tomorrow is the weekend so we will be visiting an Agent Orange Rehabilitation Center and a day travel to Nha Trang!