Hue more

As we guided our bikes down the equivelent of a country lane in the outskirts of Hue children began screaming with delight as we cruised by. This was to be a common trend throughout the trip. Fifteen giants with helmets delighting children into fits of screaming and giggles. It has consistently put huge smiles on all of our faces!
Our final destination was a orphange where we were to spend the next five days. We immediately met with the Hue(a woman) who ran the school there. She was kind, spoke English but was difficult to understand and was genuinely very proud and happy to have us there. We also met with the founder. He was a humourous man who spoke his own language and as much English as we spoke Vietnamese. Which is not much. So far we had hello, thank you and goodbye down. At least most of time. As the owner spoke through a translator we understood that they were really looking forward to working with us. As teachers we were treated with utmost respect. Apparently teachers are as revered as much as doctors if not more in Vietnam.
We took a tour of the orphanage and were served a meal by the house mothers there. We were to be treated to these homecooked meals three times a day for the rest of our trip. It was so good. Soups with pork and noodles, sweet potatoes, rice, fish cooked whole, pho, desserts of fresh fruit everymeal and more. This was the best chance we had to eat as the people of this country do and we took advantage. After our meal we found out what we were to be doing.
A playground needed to be constructed in an area currently coved with trees and uneven dirt. There was a fish pond that was going in the middle and sidewalks and swings to be put in on a later date. check out http://www.huehelp.org/node/204 for some pictures and background.
We kept getting glimses of the intially shy children there. They would come smile and then disappear giggling. Finally it was time to head home via bicycle.
The next two days consisted of hot labour on the playground. We had huge mounds of dirt to move via shovels, picks and wheelbarrows. Our goal was leveling the ground. I worked as much as possible on the tree removal team. Being well versed with a chainsaw I was not given the opportunity to cut them down by hand. We used scyles and a two man saw to cut the big and small trees around. I don't know why it is so much fun to do but I love watching trees come crashing to the ground provided they land on know one and come down for good reason! Students were also given the chances to go and play with the orphans as they were around during breaks in school. We learned some fun games they played and were amazed at the simple tools they had to play with and how much fun they had with them. I can't imagine Americans enjoying playing jumping games with rubber bands or playing jacks with rocks but as we joined in it was relieving to see this gameboy generation of students I was helping to teach enjoy what saw the children of vietnam use.
A day off allowed us to tour the city which was dominated by the Chinese rulers for hundreds of years. Everywhere were huge memorials, or grave but not in the sense of the ones we know. They were all around and then downtown was structured like the Forbidden city in China with moats, huge walls surronding buildings with open squares and courts. We went to the Hope village that day as well and learned and met the folks there who made handicrafts there. All of them suffered from disablilities of some sort and this center trained them in ways they could make a living. It was one of the most memerable moments of our trip as our initally uncomfortable students spent two hours playing, singing songs, taking thousands of pictures and communicating with the folks there. I was seated at a table with four of our students and five people who worked there. We struggled to communicate until we discoved that one of them was deaf and spoke American sign lanuage. One of our students started to communicate with her own knowledge and they ended up talking for hours as we all jumped in. So cool!