Tim's Vietnam Service Learning Trip: Starting from Scratch

Pho breakfast with Bang and Anh

When we come back in February we'll be building a new computer lab using VMware View, and today was the day we were going to visit an orphanage that Orphan Impact had never visited, and see if it looks like a good place to build a new computer lab from scratch. We assumed that the kids would be in school and we'd just wander around and check out the location and infrastructure, but turns out we were wrong. Instead the kids were off-school due to flooding, and seemed to have absolutely nothing to do but hang with us and run around.

The place was honestly a bit rough, looking kind of run down, and when we arrived the kids were pretty much hanging by themselves as the director was out somewhere. But having some time to play with the kids turned out to be an unexpected but really cool surprise. The fact that we don't really get a lot of kid time is one of the harder pieces of this gig.

Super cute kids

The lab area was also pretty rough and needs a lot of work. They have a computer lab full of machines, but they are some 1980s vintage, and every single one of them is broken, meaning its a bit like a computer grave yard in the middle of the school.

Land of the Dead Computers

Random lost puppies were everywhere

We walked around the corner and it turns out the orphanage is right on the river. Pretty scary with all the flooding issues we've seen, and with more typhoons bearing down on the area.

Definitely will need to keep computers and power source way off the ground here

Overall its a place that really needs help, so will be a lot more fun to come install systems here, rather than the kind of clean and new centers we were seeing in Ho Chi Minh City.