Day three in Vietnam

One of my friends, Jen, is part of a leadership class and the main project for this class is a group service project that they had to set up themselves. So on the third day in Vietnam they went to the Little Rose Warm Shelter, and I went with them. This shelter is for girls who had been rescued from human trafficking situations. When we got there at 12:30 they told us that they had just sent us an email saying that we shouldn’t come until 6 pm because the girls would be at school till then. The main service part of the project was buying them a printer so we decided to split up and do some sight seeing, buy the printer, eat, and then go back to the shelter. Jen, Laura, and I went to the Independence Palace. It was really nice inside with lots of fancy furniture, carpets, and decorations. When we left to go meet the rest of the group to buy the printer it started to rain. I had a poncho with me but the other two didn’t so we tried to huddle under it and walk at the same time. Soon after this a really nice random lady stopped on her motorcycle and gave us her extra poncho. We gave all our bags to Laura and put the poncho on her while Jen and I continued to share the one I had. We finally managed to hail a cab and make it to the place we said we would meet the others and went to the LG store to buy a printer. At this point Laura and one of the other girls decided to go back to the ship. We finally picked out a printer and the four girls from the class paid for it and we left. This time we put the poncho over the girl carrying the printer. We walked down the street a short ways and found a little bakery/café. I had a large soft roll with ham and cheese in it, it was really good. After eating we went back outside hail another taxi to drive us back to the shelter, the only problem was it was rush hour in the rain and all the cabs were full. We walked down the street a few blocks and crossed the street with out getting run over. At a hotel some people were getting out of a cab so we got in. We got to the shelter again at 6:30pm. We played some group games with the girls and set up the printer, which of course works to perfection (Something I learned how to do at my internship at UTMC). We then painted nails and had our nails painted by the girls and made friendship bracelets. It was a lot of fun and truly amazing to interact with girls that only know a few words in English and yet we were still able to understand each other well enough. When we finally left we hailed another cab and went and ate dinner at a Pho restaurant. Jen and I got back to the ship around 11:20pm. It was a long and muddy wet day.