Pages

Monday, June 27, 2011

Recap of Week One in Quang Tri

Is it sad that I've only written three blog posts in the two weeks I've been in Vietnam thus far?

We just started our second week in Quang Tri today, and our construction projects have been going smoothly. Our group is split into two teams, which we affectionately call the Restroom Team and the Parking Team. As you might be able to guess, one team is in charge of building a restroom for an elementary school, while the team I belong to is constructing a parking lot for the youth center. It's kind of cute, actually -- when we went out for karaoke Friday night, singing as we walked down the main street in the town, I felt like I was in a Quang Tri rendition of West Side Story, except our "gang" names are much cooler than ones like the Jets and the Sharks.

Jokes aside, construction is quite a challenge. Breakfast is served at 5 am, and we are required to bike to the construction site and start working by 6 am. We work until a little after 10 am, and then we rest and have lunch (and nap, if we're lucky) until 2 pm, when we have to be at the Youth Center to teach English until 4 pm. Dinner is served at 6 pm, and usually at night we have meetings about teaching plans and construction progress. Oh, and at some point during the day we find time to wash our clothes by hand.

But all in all, the work here is very rewarding. I am quite optimistic that I will slim down enough to look decent in an Ao Dai (traditional Vietnamese dress) by the time our time in Quang Tri is over.

The last two posts have been inexorbitantly long, so I think I'll write separate posts about some of the interesting stories that have happened here in the past week. Toodles.

No comments:

Post a Comment