Day 8 - Camp at Long Hai!

The end of our aid expedition is almost here - over 300 children have come from Kien Giang (14 hour by bus), Dong Thap (11 hour by bus) and Saigon (4 hour bus ride) to Long Hai to ..... PLAY!!!

Three of our five group of children has been to camp before - the Little Rose Girls, and the children from My Hiep and Tan Hoi Trung villages (of Dong Thap). They were definitely excited to return. The other children had NEVER been on such a long bus ride let alone away from home before. Our girls and their brothers from Kien Giang's garbage dump had some really amazing "aha!" moments....a shower, flushable toilet, a real bed, and unlimited food during meal times.

After dinner on Saturday night we went upstairs to greet them all again - we were now familiar faces so we had many say "hello!", wave and even run up to us with a hug. We gave them their "fun bags" - a bag full of drawings, stickers, new clothes, toiletries, toys and even some candy. As soon as we handed them out the kids were starting to trade. Well went to bed early to get up early for a day on the beach.

The next day for the start of camp - our team had 10 activity stations - arts & crafts, poloaroid pictures, friendship bracelets, drawings, jenga, twister, volleyball, soccer, relay races, sand castle building....all fun stuff! The kids came to us in groups of 20 and would stay in each station for about 20 minutes and then switch. It worked great and was very organized ...for about an hour! and then the kids got tired and wanted to stay longer, do more stuff, etc....and it went back to being what camp was all about - running around and doing the stuff you wanted to or just kicking back in under the cabana.

By 10:30 a.m. the kids wanted lunch and many of the kids - especially the kids that never have been in a hotel before just wanted to go back to their rooms and take another shower! One of the Kien Giang girls was convinced that the best part of camp was that we gave her a room with a shower and she could take one whenever she wanted to!

After the early lunch we took a huge group picture - which will have to be pasted together because we are one huge group - over 400 strong! and then we had a "controlled" swin time....there were jelly fish to avoid...it was really a lot of fun until about 2:00 and then the we all went back to our hotel to rest and shower up. For our team it meant jumping in the pool for a good hour! Stay tuned for a posting of our "synchronized swimming" show from our boys and men!