good bye 15May - Vua Hac Vua Lac

today we had the English championship, the culmination of events in the past 2 weeks, to give the children a day of fun-filled activities involving games to reinforce the english they've been learning from us.

i woke up today with mixed feelings, and they persisted to occupy my thoughts throughout the day. We spent the morning preparing the school, hanging up banners, decorations, preparing the game stations as well as putting together goodies bags. At noon, it looked like it was going to rain heavily, threatening the days activities, but then the clouds held up and GOD gave the children a day to remember. I truly believe this was gods grace, he definitely didn't want the children to have a day of disappointment. The activities were scheduled to start at 1pm, but then at 130pm, only a handful of children turned up. This was somewhat depressing at first for us, and even more for the members of the EC component who faced so many setbacks and obstacles from day one of PV08. Thankfully, the rest of the kids turned up at 2pm, and the days planned activities went on as planned.

My mixed feelings were stirred mostly by 2 antagonistic views. Firstly, seeing the smile on faces of the children throughout the last 2 weeks and even more so today; I've never really felt happier and more satisfied with anything I've done previously compared to my time spent here with SEALNet. The second feeling is one of sadness; I feel really sad to say goodbye to them. I wonder how much we've done in the last 2 weeks will really affect them. Coming into this project, I knew that we could only do so much for them, but I truly truly hope that in 5 years time, If I get the opportunity to come back and see these kids grown up, they would have somehow with God's grace and blessings made good with their lives and continue to pursue excellence. What is worst is that I can't speak Vietnamese, so it was really hard to say goodbye to them. It was only in the last few days where these kids actually started addressing me by 'Jeremy', before it was just facial recognition.

Well, there is only so much that can be achieved in 2 weeks. I just pray and hope that these children will have good lives. I know they won't be reading these, but I want to say this to them, " I will truly miss everyone of you, (Thuy and Dao especially), you have changed my life and my perception of life. You have provided me a life lessons that I would treasure for the rest of my life and I can only wish that I have at least left some figment of an influence on you." " I will always be thinking of you and praying for you, but come next week we won't be around and I pray you won't be sad, continue to be a kid and at the same time be good."