Truc at the Home of Affections

5 January 2007 continued
We came back for lunch, I went to the internet cafe (2000VND/hr-cheap!) and sent a few emails, then we headed out again. This time to the Home of Affection. It's much closer, less than 10 minutes by bike.

It was quite different from the baby orphanage because it is also a school and the play area was larger, but not covered. The kids there range from 4-16 years old. Many have one (or both) parents alive, but they were too poor or the government took them.

The 16-year-old is Nga and she is deaf. She is fluent in sign and so we were having a good time trying to communicate. There are many differences [between American Sign Language and Vietnamese Sign Language], but I was able to pick up a bit of it. She was teaching me more and I'm hoping to get fairly decent at it by the time we leave.

There is another child there who is supposedly 16, but he has something wrong with him [Added: we were later told he was 14, so I don't know how old he really is]. He is about the size of a 6- or 7-year-old and has the mental ability of someone around 4 years old. It was shocking to find out his age. He always wants to be held and just repeats "Hello. How are you?" over and over.

This seems to be the key phrase that people learn. The other is "Hello. What is your name?" Everywhere we go people should "Hello!" and, sometimes, the other bits as well.

Some of the kids at the orphanage can speak pretty well, mostly the older girls who were a bit awestruck by Stuart. Too funny.

Today we just visited, but next week we will start teaching there. My kids were a bit bored and happy to leave; we'll see how next week goes.