Last Clinic day and free day in Dalat
Trip Start
Jun 14, 2008
1
10
18
Trip End
Jul 02, 2008
Dalat,
Vietnam
Sunday, June 29, 2008
After clinic we stoped at a local place in Dalat for lunch and then headed to drop off some more donations. First we stopped at a disabled home and donated 10 wheelchairs. We only stayed long enough to drop them off and hear some words of thanks from the director. After the disabled home we went to another orphanage and donated 1 ton of rice and gave things that we brought from the states to the children. This time around, there were a lot of children at the orphanage. We played with them for a while and then when it was time for us to leave, they sang us a few songs, both in vietnameese and english. Very cute!
After that we had from 1 till 630 free before we had to be at dinner for our farewell dinner with the translators. I decided to just lay low and take a nap. At dinner they had local/heritage music and dance while we were eating. Nate and i sat with out Translator Wang. He was showing us the ins and outs of how to prepare the food that they put on the table. It was a soup that you had to put the meat and vegetables in to cook before you ate. It was pretty neat. After dinner, Dr. Countryman had some words to say and gave each of the students best/most likely awards along with a gift. The gifts were either bottles of wine or coffee. I got wine. My best/most likely was a low blow from dr. countryman. He is from Nevada, IA and went to University of Iowa. So naturally he poked fun at Iowa State. I was the biggest fan of a losing football team. Everyone got a kick out of it. I lauged about it too. Actually i kind of expected that from him.
After that was over, our translators got up on stage and sang us some songs and what not. Then it just turned into another party with the health officials. It's kind of wierd how business is done over here. I think i've said this before but business is done over drinks instead of lunches and what not. After the festivities were over in the hotel reception area we all decided to walk down to a club and have some more drinks there. Kind of fun, a lot of techno, which i'm not really in to but still an alright time. We ended up back to the hotel and in bed around 12 30 or so.
After waking up at 9, i know crazy, we had breakfast and hung around the hotel for the rest of the morning till we were to meet with Wang for an early lunch. He had an apptitude test for english at 2, so we wanted to wish him luck and buy him lunch before his test. So around 11 30 he showed up and we went to the pizza place just across the street from the hotel.
So we wished Wang good luck and ran into another translator that was comming back from church. We called this other translator Short round, just like the Indiana Jones movie. He looks almost exactly like him and a lot of his mannerisms are very similar. He wished us luck with all of our travels and then took off. Then nate and I wanted to head up to a meditation center for the buddhists, so we rented some scooters and headed that way. It was kind of neat b/c we had to take a "enclosed ski lift" to the meditation center. Of course cost more money to ride there, oh well.
There were about 7 or 8 buildings at the place and monks were learning there. It was actually really cool. After that we decided to ride the scooters around the lake and went back to the hotel. Had the buffet for dinner and now here i am. We leave for Ho Chi Mihn tomorrow then a free day. Well that's about it, like i've said, i'm taking lots of pics and after i get back, check this out and i'll have all of them up. Hope all is well and I'll update soon!
