El Primer Dia

By Gabby Phi

Today was our first day working at the school. We arrived at the site around 8:30. Even though it was rather early in the morning, all of the locals were already hard at work: some were laying down tiles, pushing wheel barrows of dirt, and installing fans on the ceilings. We split up into 3 teams: the medical team, the wall painting team, and the window/door painting team. I was in the wall painting team. We attached tree branches to the paint rollers to reach the higher spots on the wall. We painted a total of 3 rooms today! We have one more room to paint tomorrow, the room that was used for the medical treatment today, and then we're going to paint the outside walls of the classrooms.

As we painted near the windows, the local children gathered around us from the outside, asking us our names and ages. Unfortunately, none of them could say my name. Instead, they just stared and smiled at me as I repeated my name several times. One boy even asked if I had a husband!

During the breaks, we played with the children. There was a cow behind the school and I got to pet it! The kids gathered around us and the cow and we asked them to sing a song. One of the little boys started to rap in Vietnamese! I had never listened to Vietnamese rap until today, and I must say, it was pretty great. We also played other games with the children like tug of war with a rope that we found, limbo, and piggy back races. At one point, we even formed a Hip Hop dance circle.

I don't think I have ever had this much fun before! Playing with the kids was an absolute blast. They were so happy and joyful when they played with us. They can literally make any situation fun, making games out of the simplest things like a rope. I absolutely can't wait to go back tomorrow!