Below are the 2 most recent journal entries recorded in gipp's LiveJournal:

Saturday, January 29th, 2011
7:00 am	First Day at the Friendship Village 21 December 2010 Walking to our classroom on our first day volunteering at the Friendship Village yesterday, Jean and I came upon a sturdy little girl who greeted me with a right jab to the stomach. I appreciated the irony. The Friendship Village is an educational and medical facility located in the outer urban sprawl of Hanoi, Vietnam. It came into being and has been operating for over a decade largely through the cooperation of Vietnamese and international veterans groups. George Mizo, an American Vietnam War veteran, took a major part in founding the facility with the aim of repairing the rift between Americans and Vietnamese created by the conflict between the two countries that spanned over the 1960s and 70s. The Friendship Village's target groups are children affected by exposure to the still present toxins found in herbicides (e.g. Agent Orange) used during the war and poorer Vietnamese veterans. The children suffer from a wide range and varying degrees of physical and mental disabilities. Lacking adequate government support networks the veterans are often malnourished and have long standing medical issues stemming from actions during their military service. After securing my Chinese visa early Friday afternoon, Jean and I took a taxi to Friendship village on the outskirts of the city. We were met by Ms. Han, the facility's translator. She gave us a tour of the grounds. It's a huge complex. There are about 120 students and 30 to 40 volunteers. The students usually attend for two to three years before returning to their families. They live on campus and attend special education and occupational classes. The veterans stay for a month or two. Over that span they are given medical care and ample nourishment often putting on much weight.   As volunteers, Jean and I are provided with pretty ample nourishment ourselves. At 7:00, 10:30 and 4:30 we are served huge proportions of rice, noodles, greens, tofu, eggs and fruit. The fare is pretty simple but there's lots of it. There are no Saturday and Sunday classes so Jean and I spent much of our weekend huddled underneath blankets in our room wondering how we suddenly got into fall and what happened to our summer. Jean ventured out one afternoon and procured a jumper. I decided that I would bide my time. Yesterday morning, after my pugilistic greeting, Jean and I strolled into Special Education Classroom 2 at 8am where 10 students in the 10 to 14 age range sat dutifully at their desks. The classroom was well stocked with games and toys. As the teacher wasn't there yet so we launched into some "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" and then went to work on some puzzles. The teacher arrived and did some speaking exercises. Then it was back to the puzzles and games. I assisted one little boy who seemed quite intent on sharpening a plethora of map pencils. Class broke up a little after ten. Jean and I stopped by our room to wash up before heading to cafeteria for lunch. Rice, morning glory, cabbage, cold springy fried tofu, boiled eggs and oranges. It bore a striking resemblance to the past few lunches and dinners we'd had. At two we were back at the classroom block, this time in flower class. Embroidery and tailoring are also taught at the Friendship Village. Ms. Han thought it best we help out in the flower class. For two hours we made flower stamens. The process consisted up taking five short pieces of stiff thread and securing them together we a piece of twisted wire. At the other tables students were making stems, leaves and petals. I found the work a little tedious but I've heard mentally disabled people often enjoy repetitive tasks. Some of the higher level students were assembling the components into bouquets and arrangements. The end results were quite amazing. At half past four the classes were over and we broke for dinner. Close on the first day at the Friendship Village. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
6:03 am	Aaron sells out to technology and starts a blog Before leaving for the Peace Corps I had grown increasing while not necessarily anti-technology more technology-less- going without a TV, refusing to get a cell phone, not upgrading past Windows 98 and eventually not having a computer at all. I assumed that this would be good preparation on what I thought would be a two year moratorium on tech stuff. Peace Corps is all about living in mud huts and reading by candle light right? Not exactly. I had a cell phone eight weeks into service. A month and half ago I bought a flash drive (portable hard drive). I'm getting a computer for my house and any month now we should have satellite internet in my village. Orginally, I had entertained romantic notions of hand writing all correspondence with long flowing letters. Well, most of you have seen how well that worked. Sorry. So, I've sold out and started a blog. It seems like the popular thing to do now. So, dear friends and family I hope to keep you abreast of what I'm doing currently while converting some of handwritten journals into accounts of what I've been up to for the past year and a half. So, without further adieu... Where am I and what am I doing? Good question. I'm in Georgia [formerly the Soviet Republic of Georgia] or about ten time zones or so away from central Texas. If you take out your maps it’s between Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenian. More specifically, I’m in the village of Mukhaestate (population ~2000 people), four miles from the eastern coast of the Black Sea and 25 miles from Batumi (the third biggest city in Georgia). Even more specifically, I live in a two story concrete house near the center of the village with my Georgian host family. I have a host father, Olegi(55), host mother Mzia(43), host grandmother Emine(83), and two host brothers Aleko(22) and Mindia(21). Plus I have loads of host aunts, uncles and cousins who live in Mukhaestate and neighboring villages. More on the family in later posts. And now, what am I doing? I find myself asking that question all the time. I’m part of the Peace Corps TEFL [Teaching English as a Foreign Language] program. There are about 60 of us in country. Our primary job is teaching English classes in coordination with Georgian English teachers. Our official role is to introduce communicative teaching methodologies in the classroom. In layman’s terms we’re here to make learning fun or at least not so excruciatingly boring. “Memorize this text about the history of Great Britain and recite it? Change these sentences from active to passive voice? Read and translate? That’s sounds exciting but why don’t we trying using the language in a practical context, do some role playing, maybe play a game that will help the students learn what the words mean.” That’s in essence what I do. There are two English teachers at my school in Mukhaestate, Ketino [Mrs. Kate] and Makvala [Mrs. Makvala]. They are both very nice middle aged ladies. We teach English in the 5th through 11th grades. So, my primary job is teaching, introducing new western ideas in the classroom and what not. My secondary job is a little harder to define. Essentially, we do whatever needs to be done and that we’re willing to do in the community. This might be organizing after school clubs and find funds to remodel the library. Right now I’m working with some other volunteers to start a national boys leadership camp. More roles we play… We’re “the American” in our community. Most Georgians have never seen a real, live American. I’m there model of what an American is right along with Britney Speares, Justin Timberlake and Eminem. The Peace Corps is the warm and fuzzy side of the US foreign policy. We’re Corps who don’t wear camo and carry M-16s. Further, a volunteer’s job is also to bring back information about the people of these faraway lands to the people of the United States. So, hopefully within this blog I hope to accurately relay to you what life is like here in Georgia. I’m going to try to post weekly. We’ll see how well that works. Take care. (4 Comments |Comment on this)