Day 6
The past 2 days have been rather intense in terms of work schedule. full days of workshops to conduct + a very early morning start to Can Gio, to visit a rural shelter. Alot has happened in the last 2 days and several emotions have been stirred. this is where i shall start my blog entry tonight.
several emotions were stirred a few days ago during our nightly debrief sessions. some group members felt somewhat inadequate in terms of their value towards this service project, while the leaders of the project felt that the project was coming apart as some members of the team helpless; and they could not provide direction.they even cried. Sometimes, I feel that when people take on responsibilities and tasks, they tend to stray from it. I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way, i.e. shirking off responsibilities. What I am trying to say is, we often set lofty goals and these goals may be far beyond our own capabilities. When these tasks aren't accomplished to our expectations, the feeling of dejection and failure becomes a greater insult. This however, does not give us an excuse to settle for mediocrity or 'average'. This is one of the main lessons that I have taken away from my experience with SEALnet so far.
Visiting Can Gio today was quite an eye-opening experience. Seeing the state of living in the community there was quite surreal. Given the 3rd world status of Vietnam, one can still find it hard to believe that there are still places around with living conditions so poor, one would classify them below rudimentary. I could not imagine myself growing up as a kid in such a place, and I thank god for blessing me with such a fortunate life thus far. We spent most of the time playing children games with them, some might find them really silly, but just seeing the kids enjoy themselves made it all worthwhile. We even took them out to the beach for a few hours of fun, if we weren't there they would not have other means of going out of the compound for fun0filled activities.
Tonight's dinner has been the most fascinating to date. I actually tried some half-hatched duck eggs, steamed to cook. It actually dosent taste that bad, pretty much like a mild salted duck egg, or a century egg. but then I was curious and decided to perform an autopsy with my innate surgical skills, with the rest of the table like an audience of eager medical students.
Day 7
During our time here, we also have several 'professional' mentors. Their alleged role is to provide MENTORSHiP and guidance for us the PV08 team members. But so far, all they have done is actually nothing more than create more unnecessary emotional tension. I know they have no intention of doing so, neither do they wish to compromise the dynamics of our team. But perhaps, they could have been more astute in their judgments which would have avoided some hurtful comments thrown out in the spur of the moment. Not only did this meeting not serve and positive benefits, it was very frustrating, and no doubt left a dent in our framework. But these have now been resolved, and there are more important things at hand to address. The mentees have started to rebel against us the mentors and we find it an increasing challenge to balance between accommodating their needs without compromising their learning experience.
On a lighter note. I must comment on the varying standards of Vietnamese cuisine i have been experiencing. The Pho restaurants have been great, and so are some of the swankier restaurants. that being said, we have also experienced restaurants which got our orders wrong several times, took ages to deliver our orders and last but not least the BADDEST tasting chicken rice or Can Ga I have ever tasted. The rice was tasteless, the meat cold and the skin LEATHERY. Truly disgusting. In the words of Shang, 'definitely a gustatory insult, that would leaves more to be desired"
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