Peace Orphanage ... Wednesday, 14th of October

Rest day - admin duties - Matt was downloading all the pictures taken on the trip to the MeKong Delta, we updated the profiles of the HOPE SCHOOL for HEARING IMPAIRED children, wrote emails. Then we went shopping - ran out of cheese.

In the afternoon we went the Peace Orphanage. Talked to NHI, the head nurse about THANH's operation, (see picture). Specialists from US will come to the Peace Orphanage in November and assess him and other children and will let us know about the approx. cost.

Then we met with the boy that played the keyboard so well last year. Sorry I forgot his name. Uli and Helen bought him a proper keyboard last year. He got the keyboard out and played for about 15 minutes for us. Afterwards we asked NHI if we could pay for him to get lessons to improve his keyboard skills. Aparently he is busy studying for his school exams. It is up to them now to get back to us.

Played with the children .... then HOAN, (means HAPPY in Vietnamese) the 23 year old student who lives at the Peace Orphanage came back from uni and Uli got talking to her. Then HOAN just took her trousers off, and to Uli's surprise she has leg prostheses on both legs. We had noticed that she walked with a bit of a limp, but we had not expect this.
HOAN lives and sleeps with eight other girls in a room, she only has a small desk and a lockable cabinet which she calls her own. She can only study at night when all the kids are asleep.
Anyway, we sat together chatting and later on Matt helped her with her lap top, good old SONY, heavy as a brick, very slow and only 26 GB hard disk. Matt checked and performed the usual ... like free up disk space, defragment the hard disk etc.

Walked home .... it's cooling down as soon as the sun sets, which is good.