change in departure plans, agian.... Looks like we will be leaving before Sandy, Patty and their kids rather than after them! You see it's Gail's 50th birthday on April 7 and the thought of not being able to ring in her 50th year just wasn't sitting right! So, Sandy spun her magic once again, and Maya and I will return home on April 3, no stop in Singapore. Now I can be there to help Gail celebrate the way one should celebrate their 50th birthday! Funny how things always work out in such a wonderful way!

ALIVE meeting and more "fun bags"

We had our ALIVE meeting tonight. All of the kids put together "fun bags". With the help of the ALIVE mentors, the children were able to draw pictures and write greetings in Vietnamese. The kids had a blast. Here are a few photos of all the fun! I had to add a photo of the yummy chocolate covered strawberries! Thanks Katherine and Micheal!!!

Packing up the goods!

We got together with Sandy, Patty and the kids to pack and ship all of the donatins that we won't be able to bring with us. The airline only allows 35 pounds per bag, 2 bags per person with no option to pay for over weight bags! So we are shipping them off to Catalyst in Minnesota where there are 20 people going and are willing to take our extra stuff! We only have about a month before we leave. I guess it's time to start packing and weighing all of our bags!!
Maya has collected over 40 fun bags thus far! I expect we will gather at least 50 more over the next couple of weeks.
Here are a couple of pictures of the packing party! We als had snow on friday so I through in a couple of pictures of Maya and Sally in the snow (sally is the dog!).

getting closer!

We are about a month away from our departure date! I am amazed by all the stuff we have collected this far. We went to Kim's today to borrow a large hockey bag. Thanks Kim! I think we may need a few more hockey bags! The "fun bags" alone will take up one bag! At this point Maya has collected 40 or 50 bags. I think we will probably have about 100-150 when all is said and done. We also have a case of poloroid film, a poloriod camera, all of my niece Shealyn's summer clothes and if you know my sister that's a lot of clothes! We have stickers, small games, flip flops, crayons, about 75 onsies and so much more! Not to mention all of the over the counter meds! I will take a photo of all of the stuff as we pack the bags!!! At this moment all of the stuff is taking up every ounce of free floor space in my bedroom!

Our Vietnamese culture class at Yale celebrated Tet this past Sunday. We had an amazing time! The Yale Lion Dance Team was there to teach all of us the dance of the lion. The biggest treat of all was their preformance. the Lion dance is truly magical to watch. I have a video that I will try to upload. Hopefully I don't like blow up my computer, I have no idea what I am doing :)!

Maya was more than willing to learn the jumps in the lion dance! The lion dancers were so wonderful with all of the children! They were so happy to teach the steps and dance with the kids. It was 2 hours of amazing dancing and fellowship!

team assignments and Maya's "fun bags"

We got our team assignments the other day! Maya and I are both on the school/food distribution team. I must say that I am delighted to be on the school team. I am really looking forward to meeting all of the children, seeing the schools and watching all of the kids break through language barriers and really work together! Nothing like watching first hand the amazing beauty of children working together from 2 different cultures. I would dare say that some of our world leaders can learn a lot from the children! The only draw back of me being on the school team will be the fact that Maya and I will be together all day! I know that sounds terrible and I really don't mean it the way it sounds. What I really mean is that I was really looking forward to Maya having her own experience without me. I am hoping that the team is large enough that she and I will be doing different things, that I'm not always in her space and that she is able to gain some independece and her own experience! With all of that said I am really glad to be on the school team :)!

Maya created her flyers for the fun bags, we made 147 copies and she passed them all out to her school friends. She was so proud the day she came home from doing this! It was really neat to see her beaming as she walked in the door. We have had so many calls from friends and people we don't know very well. Everyone is delighted to be able to share in this trip with us. I only wish that i could carry as many bags as I wanted onto the plane! People are so amazingly generous, asking what else we might need. We are so limited in space that we are not able to take too many extras beyond the fun bags and all of the other doanted items such as OTC meds, baby clothes, crayons, polaroid film, and stickers, loads of stickers! I figure Maya and I can both fill those giant hockey bags with donations, one big suitcase with our clothes and one medium suitcasee with food and stuff. I'm sure we will go over the weight limit!