As this is a day of very different experiences, we thought it best to split the experiences into “mini blogs” from our three bloggers today. Enjoy!
Isabella S
Today, we started our big day with a delicious breakfast cooked by the local Vietnamese family. It was such a privilege to be made a traditional meal from members of the village community. After breakfast, we walked to the building site, ready for a challenging day ahead. It was quite overwhelming to see bare land with nothing on it, knowing that by the end of the two days, it would be a house. As the day went on, it was really interesting to see the progression of the house. We all connected and worked together to lay bricks, mix cement and weave the banana leaves. The heat was exhausting and was a real obstacle for most of us who hadn’t experienced such climate before yet alone having ever built a house from the ground up. After a nutritious lunch, the group went back to their houses for a siesta. It was so relaxing and refreshing to quietly rest in our rooms during the hottest part of the day and gave everyone an opportunity to regain energy and strength. It was a 6 hour day of building and by the end, I’m positive everyone was overly impressed and proud of how much we had accomplished in such a short period of time. The commitment and enthusiasm that every member of Vietnam Red displayed showed resilience, courage and persistence. The opportunity to make a local Vietnamese families dream come true was a real accomplishment and made me consider just how lucky I am to live where I do and have the things I have. It made me appreciate certain items that I take for granted and respect how the villagers take so much pride in their family and that materialistic items mean nothing in the long run. Overall, it was a challenging, hot and exciting first day in the village.
JadeS
Today was an early morning wake up as it was our first day of the build. We first enjoyed a local breakfast of egg omelette in bread with cheese. After breakfast we walked through the village to where we were building the house for the family in need. It was a hard and sweaty job that started slow but as we progressed it got easier. I worked on one of the walls by myself. I did this by layering a layer of cement, putting a pyramid on the end of a brick and placing it, then scraping the edges and repeating this step until the wall reached the top of the door. We then had a lunch break and took a well needed afternoon siesta. After a slow wake up we all got back to work. This time I worked with Ash to build up the wall and we managed to finish it. We felt as though we achieved quite a lot in one day. As a team, Vietnam Red had done an amazing job overall and the house was well on its way to being completed. After a long and hard day of committed work we dragged ourselves back to our home stay. There we had showers which took a long time as it was one shower between 12 girls. After a relaxing afternoon we had a delicious dinner of local seafood, meat and vegetables. We fell asleep feeling motivated to wake up the next day and continue to work extra hard to complete the house for the family in need.
Michael J
Today was the second day of staying in the Mekong Delta, and the first day starting to build the house for the underprivileged family. We found out that along with consultation with the mayor and local people, the township agreed upon which family needed the house the most. Their value system and sense of community struck me as it was interesting to see that is how their community agreed on spending of the resources that we have raised.. Although the day started pretty early (5:30 to be exact), I slept very well, Waking up in the morning getting ready for the big day ahead of us. To be honest, although it sounds pretty daunting to start building a house from scratch, I was pretty excited and wanted to start right away. After getting ready and changed into building gear, we had egg pancake (something like that), bread, local mango, local cake and fried bananas. After a big breakfast to start the day, our group went off and entered the building site. We were split into many small groups, some were cement makers, most of us were brick layers’, and others did heavy lifting and many more heavy activities. As soon as the work started, I knew it would be very hard and very sweaty work. After 2 minutes of work, I was sweating buckets, even with drinking a lot of water, it felt like every drop of water immediately was sweated out. However, when work started everything just fit into place, we split into small groups to work on different parts of the house and with the teamwork of the group we had done an extreme amount of work. With the house’s walls being nearly complete in a matter of hours for the first day of work we felt very pumped and invigorated to work on the next day. Overall today was a sweaty, exhausting but meaningful and inspiring day.
