Day 3!

Photo: Red Team! (Afternoon group) This is their idea of a "silly picture."

Photo: This picture is from when some of the boys from school made a surprise visit to the research center today! Haha. All of the children live within a few miles of Hoa An School, so they all walk or bike to school. I guess the boys must know other people at the research center so that is how they knew where it was.

Hi!!

Internet is working again at the research center! Today was another good day at camp! It was really sunny and nice--we played some team activities in the courtyard of the school.

I was pretty exhausted though. I had a cup of coffee at all three meals today eeeeeeks :/ But the coffee is SO good. I am probably tired from lack of sleep but also because playing with the kids is quite a workout! They have alot of energy and are always running around. We pretty much stand up from 7 am until 5:30 pm every day--with the exception of a 1 hour lunch break.

During our lunch break today, Thai and his friends made a surprise visit to the research center?? All of a sudden I looked out the window of our room and saw him! They looked through my photo albums and seemed so excited to see pictures from home and of my family!! Kaitlyn and Ellie--by the way, I found a picture of all three of us from St. Patty's Day our 2nd year in my backpack, and Goo begged for it, so I gave it to her. She proudly showed it to everyone around camp today :)

Red Team was a joy again today. They are SOO happy all of the time. Every time we ask them to repeat a phrase/expression/word in English, they YELL it to show their enthusiasm, in comparison so other teams who dont sound quite as excited.

Tonight when we finished camp we arrived back for dinner at the research center and came across a HUGE surprise....PASTA!! It was sooo nice of them to make it for us! I loved having something other than rice/veggies/meat for dinner. I think that the Vietnamese coaches enjoyed pasta and marinara as well, even though it isnt traditional for them.

Tomorrow is our last day of normal camp and then Friday is test/competition day!! Then this weekend we head to Can Tho!

Lots of love!

PS, mosquito bites are at an all time high right now...

Day 2 of Camp!

Photo: How adorable right?? This is a little boy and girl that live at the research center. They run around during all the meals and love saying HELLO to all of the American coaches. Their dog just had puppies so they play with them alot.

Photo: They are really goofy and funny. Their grandmother is the one that always helps me with coffee.

Photo: This is at the tennis courts. The kids here are doing a running relay. They go crazyyyy during the relays and cheer a lot. "GO GO GO"/cheering in Vietnamese sounds like "DOLAN DOLAN DOLAN."

Photo: Afternoon red team comes to tennis station! Love them. (One of the girl team members if missing from the photo.)

Photo: Thai comes to help me with tennis class :)

Photo: Told you they love Barbie in Vietnam! HAAA. This little girl is not a camper--she is too young to be in camp. But she comes to Hoa An every day and plays in the hallways and around the sport courts. She is always begging to help or join in on class activities, her name is pronounced Goo.

Photo: This is inside a classroom at Hoa An. All of the hallways are outside and the classroom windows open to the outside. In the middle of the school is a huge sports court with the volleyball and basketball courts.

Helllllooo!

Internet randomly started working at the research center tonight, yayyyy! We were in the middle of planning our lessons with the other coaches for tomorrow and all of a sudden we saw the coaches from camp 3 running around w/their laptops!!

Today was another great day at camp! Mon-Tues, Wed-Thurs are the same lesson plans. (Friday is competition day) So the past two days we have been teaching/coaching the same things to different groups of kids. But we meet each day twice of a day with our team (red team)--it's kind of the same idea as homeroom. When we meet with red team in the morning we focus on leadership/team building and when we meet with them in the afternoon we focus on "higher education" which is goals/future etc.

My favorite moment from school today was probably from the higher education portion of class that we did with our red team. The focus today was on important leaders and what being a leader means to them. It was really special to hear about the people that they look up to in their lives and why. I also enjoyed having red team come play tennis today!! They were awesome, I was so proud of them. (All of the color groups rotate through different sports/academics and my team didn't come to the tennis station until today.) Thai (my favorite camper) only comes to camp in the afternoon. But often times kids from town or other campers will come to hang out at the school during other sessions, simply because they enjoy being there. Today Thai came to the morning session and helped with my Tennis class. When I was doing drills with the kids, Thai would run all around the court and grab the tennis balls and place them next to me so that I wouldn't have to go gather them myself. Another highlight from class today was when Christie and I were teaching English to the kids. (She played lacrosse at Duke.) It was the last class of the day and we were attempting to practice a dialogue to the class demonstrating how you answer the question "How are you?" with different feelings. However, after both of us said "Hello" to each other, we simply stopped and stared for probably ten seconds because somehow we completely blanked on what we were doing or what we were supposed to say, so all we said to each other was "HI!" We couldn't stop laughing for SOO long and the other Vietnamese coaches plus the students were realllly confused as to what was so funny. Also the director's of the camp ambushed everyone with water balloons as we headed back to the buses today.

I did my first load of laundry today. And by that I mean swished my clothes around in some buckets and then hung them up outside. This process took up my entire nap/lunch break. I'm a little worried that it might be pointless for us to hang our wet clothes up outside considering it is SOOOO humid but oh well. I am also discovering miscellaneous scratches all over my body...I think that this is because when I run around in the morning I am usually running into branches all of the time. Or they are self inflicted scratches from touching my mosquito bites haha.

The meals at the research center are family style. But each meal pretty much consists of white rice with some fruits, veggies and meat. I can easily say I will not be eating white rice for a long time after this trip. We got fresh mango this morning and then more chum chum's tonight at dinner, it was great. But, today at lunch there was the usual pork skewers and then a bowl of.....cooked MICE!!! Ew ew ewwwww. Some people tried it but it was NOTTT happening for me. As many of you know I loooove sweets, and there are NO sweets in Vietnam. I think that that is why I have coffee w/sweetened condensed milk after every meal haha, because it pretty much tastes like chocolate milk :) I know I shouldn't be missing American food already but I do. Kelly, I thought of you today when one of the coaches whipped out a box of graham crackers. Ah, I couldn't have been happier!!

I have to go--more to come soon!! Miss everyoneeee!! xoxo

Internettttttttt!

Photo: This is what the houses and boats look like along the Mekong Delta. Some of the structures on the edge of the water are also stores. Most of the people who are on the boats on the delta actually live on their boats.

Photo: This was the view from our Hotel (Madame Cuc) in Ho Chi Minh City on our first night in Vietnam before moving to the camp.

Photo: These are the people that are in my Tennis coaching group!!

Photo: Typical conical hat haha. It originally had a blue ribbon in it, I asked them to switch it to pink. (Obviously!!) It was only 1 dollar!

Photo: When we were touring the Mekong Delta, we bought come Chum Chum's from the floating market! You split this fruit in half and eat around the pit--SOO good.

Hi!

We are currently at a hotel in Can Tho, Vietnam. It was about a 20 minute drive to get here, but it was all worth it because they have internet here :) Right now it's around 8 pm in Vietnam on Monday and I'm exhausted but its been such a good first day of camp!! I could probably write foreverrrrrr about all of the wonderful things. But, instead I'll give my top 5 observations/thoughts from the past 24 hours :)

1) I LOVE LOVE LOVE the children at Hoa An school. They are the sweetest kids. They are always smiling and everytime you see them they say "HI HI HI" they want to learn everybody's name so they can say hi to them. "Jenn" is alot easier for them to say then Jennings, so most of the children call me Jenn.

And yes, Ellie, per usual, I have a favorite child picked out already. (Maybe a few) The main one I love is a boy named Thai (that is by NO means how you spell his name, but its how you pronounce it.) He is 12 years old and is on my red team. He says "HI JENN" probably 40 times a day. And his goal in life is to get a Masters Degree and be a doctor. He is the best.

2) Research Center/Our living quarters: bunk beds, mattresses are like 2 inches thick, tons of mosquito's, showers have this sketchy bucket thing going on where you need to pour water into the drain. (Laugh it up family....Scot....etc It's not as bad as I thought though) I've gotten to the point where I have accepted that I will probably never feel very clean while I'm here, oh well!! Today I spilled all of my malaria pills over the entire room. It was a crisis! Everyone helped me retrieve all of them though. (Hopefully)

There are a few families that run/work at the research center who always prepare food for us. (We eat each meal there.) They are SOO nice but they hardly speak any English. One woman lovesss me because she enjoys helping me make coffee every day, we actually make the coffee (Shenandoah Joe style) then sweetened condensed milk and sugar--its sooooo good. She cant communicate with me at all, but she gives me lots of hugs. She is probably in her 60's or 70's.

3) Food: I haven't been a huge daredevil since I've been here but I've tried a few things...I love a fruit here called Chum Chum, I had a really good pumpkin soup, spring rolls, fish oil. I'll show some pictures. I have been a little sketched out by some meat though. For breakfast every morning our options are baguette w/peanut butter and jelly or rice noodles with vegetables--uhhhh I dont mix lunch/dinner foods w/breakfast so I have PB and J w/fruit every morning haha. Sometimes the older men/dad's that work at the research center offer me shot's of vietnamese whiskey or brandy haha. In the vietnamese culture it is rude to not accept "gifts" or offers like this, so I have accepted. I had a shot of whiskey that had been brewing with dead snakes in it the other day, how disgusting???? I am already a little tired of white rice, but the meals are a great time of the day since we get to visit with all of the American and Vietnamese college coaches all together.

4) Class and Tennis--In class today some of the main things we focused on:

Team Building Class: Teamwork

English: Teaching them, hi, how are you? whats your name? goodmorning! numbers etc. (we have 6th grade, most of them are 12)

Tennis: Forehand, Backhand, Volley, Ready position

Higher Education: What are your natural talents? What is your dream job? How are you going to achieve it?

-I almost started crying when a little girl on red team told Katie and I that her dream job was to be a teacher just like us :)

- On the other hand we had a little boy say his dream job was to be a sniper in the army...hmmmmm not so much.

-Red Team needed a cheer. So Katie and I decided that the cheer would be "GO BIG RED clap!!!" and the kids LOVE IT. Every time we ran into them the rest of the day the would scream, BIG RED NUMBER ONE, GO BIG RED!!!

5) Miscellaneous: Overall I'm having a really great time :) I feel so lucky that I am getting to have this experience. I have only been here a few days and my eyes have already been opened to many new things.

The area of Vietnam that we are in is really poor and nothing is very clean. All of the Mekong Delta is reallllly muddy, its basically just brown water. I cant believe that the Vietnamese children swim in it!!

A few Vietnamese cultural no-no's that I discovered...They do not point at people. They do not signal "come here" with their hands--that is a command for dogs only, not people. They do not pat people on top of their heads, that is a form of blessing. Homosexuality is not accepted. The whole asian stereotype of throwing up the peace sign everywhere is NOT a joke, all of the vietnamese children/coaches think that peace signs are the coolest things ever haha.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to blog again! But I'll attach some pictures of our tourism day and the research center. (I havent uploaded any pictures of Hoa An school of the children yet)--I promise I will though :)

I'm missing everyone lots!! Hope you guys are doing great!

Love, Jennings

Day 1 of Camp!

Hi everyone!

Sorry that I haven't written more or uploaded photos! The internet doesn't really work at Hoa An research center--so I can only blog via my blackberry.

Yesterday we spent the day working with the other Vietnamese coaches to get our lesson plans together for our sport and academic classes. I am teaching English and Tennis!! Then we also create lesson plans for our teams that are focused on leadership/higher education. My individual team is the red team, which I co-coach with Katie Magee (swimmer from Duke) and Giao (Zow) and Truing (Twing).

After working on all of our lesson plans we went to the school and met the kids!! The school is a 5 minute bus ride away. Meeting the kids was sooo special. They are ADORABLE. They never stop smiling and they are so eager to learn their sports and academics. I absolutely loved meeting them!!

Last night the other camp session going on came back from their weekend trip. So now their are 8 other American college coaches here which is fun. (Casey Ridge is here!) They will only be here for one more week though.

This morning I woke up at 5 am and couldn't fall back asleep. (And kelly was non stop bbm-ing me :) haha) so I went for a run on a trail, but its more like the jungle haha. Then we spent the morning teaching the classes and sports! It went muchhhhhhh better than I expected and I had so much fun. Right now we are resting and in a few minutes we will head back to camp for the afternoon session! I'll try to write more details later!!

Xoxo American Barbie

"To Be Honest, You look just like Barbie- Nghi"

Hi everyone!

Its currently 5:30 am on Sunday morning and I can't sleep. I'm in our room at the Hoa An research center with 5 other girls in it. We have these huge blue mosquito nets over our bed! Right now it sounds like somebody has been back and forth mowing the lawn outside our room for an hour...But I know there aren't lawn mowers here. I'll tell you a little about our trip so far and the trek over here!

The flights were pretty difficult if you ask me. We flew with Asiana Airlines so there were no English speaking flight attendants and hardly any American passengers. On the 12 hour flight I was in the middle seat between two non english speakers, but we communicated through expressions sort of haha. I indicated whenever I needed to pace up and down the airplane and stretch my legs. As I told some of you, a little Korean girl kept pointing and laughing at me and calling me Barbie when she would walk past me on the plane! (And then her mom would yell at her in Korean) I'll explain later how this nickname stuck...long story short, the trek over was long but thankfully problem free! And customs only yook 5 minutes. So, after over 20 hours of flying time our entire group of 9 Americans finally met up at the Ho Chi Minh Airport. We were led by two of our Coach for College leaders, Nghi and Trinh. They are 26 anf 21 and two of the sweetest and most fun women!
We stayed the night at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh city. Our hotel was 6 stories high, no elevator, and a 3 foot wide staircase--just picture me and my luggage...we all got a late dinner (2 am!) And walked around the city a little. The night life was poppin. Many bouncers tried to persuade us to enter a club called "Go Go" or "Crazy Buffalo." Throughout the night we could hear the party people and lots of moto's--but before we knew it it was 7 am and time to get ready for the day!

Yesterday we were tourists all day. We traveled in our mini bus to the northern part of the Mekong Delta. We all bought conical coconut rice hats and got on a boat with our wonderful tour guide leader, Lam. We toured around the river and saw a floating market, rode on our own paddle boats, tried lotssssss of amazing/interesting new food. Upon hearing my Barbie experience, Nghi declared that I was truly like barbie since: "my hair was SOO yellow", eyelashes so long, and I dress just like her! Haha, I can deal with that..so everytime we did something and I told Nghi how much I enjoyed it she would say, "barbie likes chum chum" "barbie likes sesame cracker." Oh and she made me sing the barbie girl song when we were on the boat singing lots of American songs. When I upload the pictures I'll explain more!

After a really fun day of touring we got back on the bus to go to pick up the Vietnamese college students that will be coaching with us. They couldn't be nicer, more outgoing and interested in the American culture! I am so excited to work with them! When we got to camp/school/research center, we had dinner and went to bed. I'm not exactly sure what's in store for us today but I'll write later!!

I'm writing from my blackberry because we haven't figured out how to use/connect w/laptops yet. So when we figure that out, I'll upload photos and go into detail about all of the cool things I've seen! Miss everyone!

Love love.

My last night in Cville!

I fly from DC, to LA, to Incheon, South Korea, and then to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Here is a pic from my last night in Cville! I'll write soon!!

A Little Bit About My Trip!

Hi everyone! I am writing to you as I am eagerly anticipating leaving for Vietnam! This is probably the most formal post I will have on my blog...The rest will probably be a lot more exciting (and blunt) as I tell all of you the details of my adventure :) I've heard the internet is pretty sketchy in Nam, but I will do my best to keep everyone in the loop and blog as much as I can! Feel free to email me too! I will be in Vietnam from July 23-August 16 and my email address is: jsg7b@virginia.edu. Here is a little bit more information about my program:

Coach for College is a new program that will be giving me the opportunity to use sports to foster good will with other nations and to promote higher education in developing countries. This program is made available to NCAA Division 1 Athletes at four universities: UVA, UNC, Duke and Virginia Tech. Coach for College was designed by Parker Goyer, a 2007 Duke graduate and former member of the Duke Women’s Tennis Team. The program, which is part of Duke University’s Center for Civic Engagement, allows American college athletes to work in Vietnam with Vietnamese college and high school students to conduct sports clinics for disadvantaged youth of middle school age using an “all-sports court” built before the program begins. In addition to giving American athletes an opportunity to provide sports instruction and infrastructure to underprivileged youth, it also allows us to use sports to get kids excited about learning, help teach values from sports which are important for educational success, and educate kids about the benefits of higher education. I believe that involving college student-athletes in social change initiatives which rely on sport as the primary means for transformation, and which include seeing different countries and some of their challenges, can revolutionize student-athletes’ development as ethical leaders in our society in a way that has never been done before.