Sorry I've been so rubbish at updating my blog, there's now so much to tell! Last week was my last of voluntary work. It was a really great week as I had come to know the children so well that having fun together came really easily. We had lots of chases around the corridors of Peace Village, despite the disapproving looks from the nurses. I've also got the children dancing too, which was so much fun. I taught Yen how to curtesy, which was very sweet. The kids j...

On Friday we left Peace House to spend our weekend off in Hanoi city centre. We checked into an awesome hostel called May De Ville Backpackers hostel- highly recommended! It feels more like a hotel than a hostel with the plush towels, air con, lift and amazing buffet breakfast (incl fried eggs!) on it's 10th floor restaurant- all for $6/night. Alice, Emily and I celebrated the start of the weekend with some cocktails at White Horse Bar. I had a 'Godmother' (strai...

This week has been pretty similar to last week- lots of playing with the children at Peace Village! I have been tasked by one of the teachers to teach a girl how to play the piano! Imagine trying to do that without speaking! I've managed to teach her a couple of lines of a well known Vietnamese song, but she's learning by patterns rather than by reading the music- kind of cheating, but oh well! There seems to have been quite a few arguments between the children t...

On wedsnesday I started my voluntary work at Peace Village day care centre. It was a bit difficult at first as the language barrier made communication so difficult; I stumbled awkwardly through some Vietnamese introductions. However, once I started playing with the children, it somehow didn't really seem to matter that we didn't understand each other! I spent the morning working with a small group of teenagers with mental disabilities, and most of them had Down...

On Tuesday we had a lovely lie in and then had a late breakfast of pineapple pancakes- delicious! The guy serving us had been having English lessons, so he pulled up a chair at our table and started to practice what he'd learnt. He was very sweet; he told us that he loves music from the 1980s!! We then went to the train station to buy our tickets for the return journey to Hanoi. However, all the staff were on their 3 hour break (!) until 1.30pm. Out train was a...