Tomorrow is the last day of teaching/coaching!?

Photo: Mom...Now that all of your children are off at college/boarding school I have found the perfect thing to occupy all of your time. Adopting Tai and making him fluent in English!! Please please please, Mom. You will love him, promise :)

Photo: All of the American girl coaches!

Photo: The kids love playing with camera's. Some of them even like to take awkward solo shots like this one!

WHAT!?! Time flew by. Oh my goodness. I am writing late on Wednesday night and I have NO idea where the past three weeks have gone. I literally feel like it was yesterday that I was just arriving here.

Tomorrow is the last day of official camp session. Friday and Saturday are competition days and final exam days. And Sunday is an award ceremony/goodbyes and then we leave after the award ceremony for Ho Chi Minh City until Monday when I head back to the US. (But actually heading to a day of roaming around S. Korea)

Tonight after camp we went to a market about 30 minutes away. I had a list of ingredients to complete my no-bake cookie recipe. (Chocolate/Peanut Butter Special K Bars) We wanted to bake this for a party/final dinner on Saturday night. I even went into the canteen with "baking pan" written in Vietnamese on a piece of paper to ask the women if they had one--which they did. ANYWAYS, at the market they had no Special K or anything like it, no brown sugar, no corn syrup and no good tasting chocolate. So, that was a no go. Instead we got a ton of Oreo's and we are going to deep fry them. Personally, I think that sounds disgusting. But the Vietnamese LOVE fried food and they fry their banana's here at the canteen, so there has to be a way for us to fry the Oreo's for them. Should be interesting.

The past few days of camp have been great. The monsoon's have continued. I have been receiving alot of little gifts from campers. For example, necklaces, hair clips, drawings, essays, photo's, collages, candy etc. These gifts have been so greatly appreciated but they have also made me really sad. I am so worried that I will really lose touch with all of these young children forever. It concerns me that I don't think any of them have any addresses, and I know they don't have email addresses. I wish that there was a way to keep in touch, but I'm afraid there isn't. Someone reminded though that I'm much happier now knowing that I got to meet them rather than not meeting them at all.

In Morality Class, which is taught by Anna, Rose, Zow and Hue one of the lessons this week was on what you are thankful for...When afternoon red team had morality class they expressed to their teachers how thankful they were for their coaches. As I was walking into our usual end of the day Leadership class with all of red team, I was greeted by their six smiling faces as they each handed me a piece of paper. The paper had my name written on one side and a sentence and picture on the other. My eyes welled up as Zow translated for me what each piece of paper said. The notes ranged from things like, "You are a great tennis and english teacher" to "Thank you so much for giving up your summer to come teach us, you and Katie have taught me everything." They were so incredibly sweet. I am quite positive I am going to have a major breakdown when I say goodbye to all of the kids, particularly afternoon red team.

Today in our Leadership Class the focus was on Higher Education. We talked mainly about how to overcome the obstacles that lie between us and our future college educations. We tried to emphasize that even though going to college is a long way away, that the students need to make little goals along the way that will help get them there. One of the boys in our class, Loc, told us that every summer he sells lottery tickets to save money for college. He makes 500 dong for every lottery ticket he sells. (20,000 dong is equal to 1 American dollar) I almost lost it. He is our golden boy--he is the one that won knock out in last week's basketball competition! I almost cried again when Andy gave Tan a beautiful wooden chess set to bring home to his family.

Tonight we started making cute gifts for our students and for the Vietnamese coaches. I'm exhausted now and headed to bed! Hopefully I don't cry tomorrow!!! AHHH.

Love, Jennings

PS, My favorite treat here are these little cookies called Panda's. They are SO good. I'm going to bring lots home to share :)

PPS, we have a GIANT spider weaving away on our bathroom ceiling. It is horrifying. The only thing keeping us from killing it is that it is actually eating a ton of bugs/trapping them in its web. Also, I am in the presence of some of THOSEEEE people that consider killing bugs/spiders to be cruel. Bugs/Spiders are not animals, they are overpopulated and they need to die. Each time I brush my teeth I stare at the spider and its web to make sure it doesn't drop down on me. I will upload a photo once I get a really good one.