Friday January 20

Mom and I both agreed we would sleep until we woke up!  There wasn’t any urgency to set an alarm, and since I had slept so poorly the night before, a good night sleep was needed.

More sleeping meds definitely helped!  With such a short trip, we wont even adjust to the new time zone before its time to come home so we slept in and had a relaxing morning!

We were so excited that our friend Long was going to be able to meet up with us today and come to the orphanage!  We decided to take a taxi, as we had our normal bags of stuff (electronics) but we also had all the medicine we bought (2 bags worth) and we had t-shirts with the kid’s faces on them made so we brought those too!

Long, Bob & Dorothy

We found Cap in the hallway playing with a car and he was so excited to see us that he dropped the car, grabbed our hands and pulled us inside!  He was ready to go and went and got strollers for the group!

We learned that the kids you take out on the first day become the kids you take out for the week, as everyone helped us get Dorothy and George in strollers so we could go out.  They were cutting down some limbs near our usual spot, but we still managed to sneak in! 

Thoung, Long & Me!

It was so nice to have Long to translate!  At one point he offered George the iPod but George said to him he wanted to wait for the iPad, oh geeze!  We did our best to spread the two iPads around.  Both Bob and Thoung like, and are very good at puzzles, so we often try to get them to do puzzles and the other kids (who are more limited) on the iPads.  Its so fun to see their minds work and to challenge them!

At one point we looked over and Cap was playing solitaire on the iPad, HA!  At one point he got stuck so I had to move some cards for him.  I don’t think he had a clue what he was doing, but he sure was having fun!

We headed back in for mealtime and since I wasn’t really given someone to feed I ended up helping George eat!

We helped to clean everyone up and Mom and Bob took on sweeping duty.  Bob loves Mom so much it’s so sweet!  He’s been very cuddly the past few days and just likes to go up to her to give her hugs.  They also make an awesome team that Mom is sweeping up in piles and he goes around with a dust pan to get everything and put it in the trash.

Mom & Bob

As we were finishing up, the workers translated to Long that Bob was so sad after we left last year and would ask, from morning until night, where we were and when we were coming back.  While this is obviously very sweet, it also breaks our hearts.

They, and Long, tried to do a better job this year of explaining to Bob that today was our last day and then we had to go back home and Long was sweet and said that we would make new memories and have lots of fun next time we were back. 

It was also nice as most of the other volunteers had left, and most of the kids had gone back to their rooms, so we were able to give the workers thank you notes and it was so perfect to have Long there and translate our thanks to them (and theirs to us) and then we took a group picture!

It’s also so tough leaving, but we try not to overthink it, in the hopes that we have given the kids a great week, and memories to last the next 365 days!

Tomorrow, we had to Phu Quoc, an island off the coast of Vietnam.  We have been looking at this as our little weekend away spot for a few years but it just never worked out.  Phu Quoc is developing very quickly into a tourist hot spot, so a lot of people have said to check it out before it becomes too developed! 

So, we are looking forward to a little R&R before returning back home!