Scholarship/Orphanage Day 1 (7/18) || Jaimie Ng

Our day started as usual with a call time at 8 AM. I remember still feeling jet lagged so I napped the entire bus ride to our first stop of the day at the Trung Tinh Thuong Ai Linh Middle School. I had to deliver a speech to introduce our scholarship program (in English of course), but compared to the MC script I had to follow for the first day of shadowing at UMC, this was light work. After the speech, there were a few more speeches made by our very own Dr. Bui with some advisors and the principal of the middle school. The students of the school also had a quick performance to welcome us, which I thought was very cute. We responded with our own performance from the UCI dance team as they performed the dance routine they did for Gala. Once they were finished, we got to the exciting part which was passing out the backpacks to the students! The previous day, BOD, with the help of some officers, was busy assembling all the backpacks and envelopes with scholarship donations to hand to the students in preparation for this day. I felt extremely happy to visit the kids and watch them receive the items we had prepared for them. Watching our MEMObers hand out the backpacks and tell them about the contents inside was also adorable as I got to witness everyone's smiles and compassion. After passing over the backpacks, we had free time to play with all of the students. While I did not speak Vietnamese, I was still able to have fun with some of the students by playing with them and putting stickers on them. I wish we had more time to play with the kids, but due to them being on summer break, the kids had to leave early to go back home. After the kids left for home, the school graciously provided all of us with lunch. The food was amazing and I found myself going back for seconds and thirds! After resting for a bit, we left to our second destination which was the Long Hoa Orphanage.

At the Long Hoa Orphanage, we had planned to distribute toys to the children there and play with them. However, we learned that they recently had a measles outbreak which caused a lot of the children to be kept in isolation until they recovered. Therefore, we were only able to pass out toys to the children who have already recovered, but we did not play with them due to the fear of possibly passing the virus to our members. Instead, we took a tour of the orphanage grounds which was pretty interesting in seeing how they have organized the place to have enrichment for the children there. My favorite was looking at their library in which the shelves were filled with books, and it looked like a cozy place to be. We ended up leaving the orphanage early after the tour since we could not play with the kids, and our first day of visiting orphanages and schools for scholarships was complete.

Sam Mac playing with the kids as they put stickers on her and run away before she can return the favor.

Calvin Ma watching as Will Nguyen gets a sticker stuck on him by one of the students.

Our MEMObers handing over a toy to the children of Long Hoa Orphanage.