Day 1 HCMC

This morning was the first time our team all met! Wow 54 (including Catalyst Staff and volunteers) in one room is overwhelming! But we all were excited to get started! After a quick, chaotic, but fun morning of sorting all of our donations the Medical Team plus a few more went to Thu Duc to an orphange to do medical check ups for 125 children. The orphanage has a great philosophy. The children live in homes on the campus with a social worker serving as the "mother" role and up to 14 children ages 5-18 living in the house. They need to take care of learn themselves, cook, clean, go to school, manage money and yet all being supported by the orphanage. Our medical team created a great system of stations to measure vitals, vision, hearing, and actual physical exams. We will have to do some follow up with a few children but we knew that it was just a "warm up " for the upcoming days.

While the medical team worked so hard we had a "swim team" consisting of the children on our team and some brave parents that took them to the new Saigon Water Park...they had the whole park to themselves at a huge fun complex. The rest of us shopped, napped and shopped some more. It's been hot, but not nearly as hot as anyone imagined (yet!) We've been in the newspapers and some online Vietnam news articles....hopefully we'll be able to find links for it soon. The press are very interested in our group coming so far to try to do so much in such a short time!

Thanks again for all your support!