I forgot to mention to you earlier, but one of the cooooolest website ever is this one: I just love it so much ! When you are getting: bored, moody, quiet, sick, nervous .... just visit that site and you will feel better ! I would prescribe 5 minutes per day to start with .... be careful NOT to get addicted to it ! :-)
Friday, January 14
Saturday, January 8
News from Birmingham
Hi folks,
I hope you had a lovely year start. I am currently in Birmingham at the VSO training center for 2 weeks of training (Skills for Working in Development & Training Skills) with the other volunteers ready for the departure next month: Papua New Guinea, Namibia, China, Malawi, Tanzania and so on ... almost as many countries as people ! It is really great: everybody is very excited about their placement.
I'll then go to Bordeaux on the 17th of January until the 25th where I will be back in Paris.
My departure is planned AT THE LATEST on the 17th of February but I am still hoping the clearances and visa will be available sooner to allow me to go as soon as possible !
For more information about VSO: http://www.vso.org.uk
I hope you had a lovely year start. I am currently in Birmingham at the VSO training center for 2 weeks of training (Skills for Working in Development & Training Skills) with the other volunteers ready for the departure next month: Papua New Guinea, Namibia, China, Malawi, Tanzania and so on ... almost as many countries as people ! It is really great: everybody is very excited about their placement.
I'll then go to Bordeaux on the 17th of January until the 25th where I will be back in Paris.
My departure is planned AT THE LATEST on the 17th of February but I am still hoping the clearances and visa will be available sooner to allow me to go as soon as possible !
For more information about VSO: http://www.vso.org.uk
Sunday, December 26
Le Chemin ...
Ce n´est pas en suivant les pas d´autrui qu'on arrive à tracer son chemin
Le chemin comblé d´obstacles et d´embûches est celui qui mène à la grandeur
L'essentiel de la vie sont les être que l'on rencontre sur son chemin
Suivez le chemin de votre âme
La vie est un chemin qui se dérobe sous nos pieds
Ne demande jamais ton chemin à quelqu'un qui le connaît, car tu ne pourrais pas t´égarer
Il ne faut pas laisser croître l´herbe sur le chemin de l´amitié
Celui dont le pied glisse montre le chemin à beaucoup
La poésie est le plus court chemin d´une sensiblité à une autre
Le vie trouve toujours son chemin
Celui qui marche droit trouve toujours la route assez large
Ne cherche pas le chemin du bonheur, car le bonheur c´est le chemin !
Le chemin comblé d´obstacles et d´embûches est celui qui mène à la grandeur
L'essentiel de la vie sont les être que l'on rencontre sur son chemin
Suivez le chemin de votre âme
La vie est un chemin qui se dérobe sous nos pieds
Ne demande jamais ton chemin à quelqu'un qui le connaît, car tu ne pourrais pas t´égarer
Il ne faut pas laisser croître l´herbe sur le chemin de l´amitié
Celui dont le pied glisse montre le chemin à beaucoup
La poésie est le plus court chemin d´une sensiblité à une autre
Le vie trouve toujours son chemin
Celui qui marche droit trouve toujours la route assez large
Ne cherche pas le chemin du bonheur, car le bonheur c´est le chemin !
Thursday, December 23
Monday, December 20
Hanoï
... just can't believe it is so bloody freezing over here !!!
Already 2 weeks in Europe, one in Nancy, one in The Netherlands and I feel like I've left Cambodia for months already ... weird !
So nice to see all my friends and family again ! It feels though that I left Europe yesterday ... strange feeling.
I'll spend a bit more time in Nancy, a few days in Paris, 2 weeks in Birmingham for a VSO training and 1 week in Bordeaux to visit friends and I'll be on the move again !
Departure is planned within the 2 first weeks of February for 6 months. Destination: Hanoï ! I am so loooking forward to it !
I'll be working in a vocational school for disadvantaged youths from the North of Vietnam that provide them with trainings in catering and hostelry. The school wants to become self-sufficient (not dependant on international donors anymore) therefore wants to make its training restaurant, hostel and bakery more profitable. So they asked me to establish their marketing strategy and implement some commercial and marketing activities for them. Sounds very exciting !
I wish you all a very happy Xmas and the best New Year ever !
I am very touched that so many of you are regularly reading my Blog so I wanted to thank you all for your interest. I promise to continue next year in Vietnam and send you lots of new exciting stories !
U, take care.
Lov' from @leX
Already 2 weeks in Europe, one in Nancy, one in The Netherlands and I feel like I've left Cambodia for months already ... weird !
So nice to see all my friends and family again ! It feels though that I left Europe yesterday ... strange feeling.
I'll spend a bit more time in Nancy, a few days in Paris, 2 weeks in Birmingham for a VSO training and 1 week in Bordeaux to visit friends and I'll be on the move again !
Departure is planned within the 2 first weeks of February for 6 months. Destination: Hanoï ! I am so loooking forward to it !
I'll be working in a vocational school for disadvantaged youths from the North of Vietnam that provide them with trainings in catering and hostelry. The school wants to become self-sufficient (not dependant on international donors anymore) therefore wants to make its training restaurant, hostel and bakery more profitable. So they asked me to establish their marketing strategy and implement some commercial and marketing activities for them. Sounds very exciting !
I wish you all a very happy Xmas and the best New Year ever !
I am very touched that so many of you are regularly reading my Blog so I wanted to thank you all for your interest. I promise to continue next year in Vietnam and send you lots of new exciting stories !
U, take care.
Lov' from @leX
Friday, December 3
HITACHI
01 Dec 2004
Mercredi 1er Décembre - Aéroport de Delhi – Salle de Transit. 17h : Déjà deux vols sur quatre d´effectués … Mais que faire dans une petite salle de transit pendant 10h30 d´attente ? D´abord on commence par faire le tour de la salle, repérer les 3 ou 4 boutiques ou restos disponibles. Dans un coin, oh ! Miracle ! Un petite salle de projection, on me passe un DVD d´un film soit-disant mythique de Bollywood. Je ris et verse quelques larmes pendant les plus de 3 heures du film. Trop bien ces bollywoods, je crois que cela me plait de plus en plus ! ;-)
En sortant de la salle, dans un recoin du hall éclairé par une série de néons, deux indiens musulmans agenouillés face au mur sur leur tapis, juste sous l´affiche publicitaire du dernier projecteur HITACHI. Cela donne l´étrange impression qu´il vénère le Dieu Hitachi pour tout ce qu´il apporte à l´humanité …
Ensuite quoi de mieux que manger pour occuper son temps ? J´avale un sandwich et je me cale dans une cabine téléphonique pour appeller Joséphine qui se trouve seulement à quelques kilomètres de moi mais que je ne peux rencontrer à cause de la barrière des bureaux d´immigration …
23h (0h30 avec le décalage du Cambodge), il me reste moins de 5 heures d´attente, je tiens le bon bout ! Quelle drôle d´impression de rentrer après être partie si loin pendant plus de 7 mois ! A la fois heureuse de rentrer pour retrouver les miens, mais également triste de quitter ce pays et tous ceux que j´y ai rencontré. Cela va être dur de passer de plus de 30 degrés Celcius pendant 7 mois à seulement 5 …
Mercredi 1er Décembre - Aéroport de Delhi – Salle de Transit. 17h : Déjà deux vols sur quatre d´effectués … Mais que faire dans une petite salle de transit pendant 10h30 d´attente ? D´abord on commence par faire le tour de la salle, repérer les 3 ou 4 boutiques ou restos disponibles. Dans un coin, oh ! Miracle ! Un petite salle de projection, on me passe un DVD d´un film soit-disant mythique de Bollywood. Je ris et verse quelques larmes pendant les plus de 3 heures du film. Trop bien ces bollywoods, je crois que cela me plait de plus en plus ! ;-)
En sortant de la salle, dans un recoin du hall éclairé par une série de néons, deux indiens musulmans agenouillés face au mur sur leur tapis, juste sous l´affiche publicitaire du dernier projecteur HITACHI. Cela donne l´étrange impression qu´il vénère le Dieu Hitachi pour tout ce qu´il apporte à l´humanité …
Ensuite quoi de mieux que manger pour occuper son temps ? J´avale un sandwich et je me cale dans une cabine téléphonique pour appeller Joséphine qui se trouve seulement à quelques kilomètres de moi mais que je ne peux rencontrer à cause de la barrière des bureaux d´immigration …
23h (0h30 avec le décalage du Cambodge), il me reste moins de 5 heures d´attente, je tiens le bon bout ! Quelle drôle d´impression de rentrer après être partie si loin pendant plus de 7 mois ! A la fois heureuse de rentrer pour retrouver les miens, mais également triste de quitter ce pays et tous ceux que j´y ai rencontré. Cela va être dur de passer de plus de 30 degrés Celcius pendant 7 mois à seulement 5 …
FATHER Jim
18 Nov 2004
Marieknoll is an NGO set up in Cambodia in 1996 by Father Jim, an American priest of 72 years old. The aim of this organization is to help and support disadvantaged people living with AIDS or with the HIV virus. They did set up lots of small projects to provide some of those people with jobs.
Visit of their own clinic, then of a house of 20 girls from 5 to 13 years old, all HIV positive or with AIDS. They are orphans or have parents with AIDS. Four dedicated women permanently look after them. The atmosphere in the house is very friendly and familial. Marieknoll has several other houses in Phnom Penh on the same model. I just wanted to congratulate Father Jim who very discreetly achieves many grandiose things.
Marieknoll is an NGO set up in Cambodia in 1996 by Father Jim, an American priest of 72 years old. The aim of this organization is to help and support disadvantaged people living with AIDS or with the HIV virus. They did set up lots of small projects to provide some of those people with jobs.
Visit of their own clinic, then of a house of 20 girls from 5 to 13 years old, all HIV positive or with AIDS. They are orphans or have parents with AIDS. Four dedicated women permanently look after them. The atmosphere in the house is very friendly and familial. Marieknoll has several other houses in Phnom Penh on the same model. I just wanted to congratulate Father Jim who very discreetly achieves many grandiose things.
CuBA/CamBodiA
05 Nov 2004
I visited A., she is a cuban doctor in her forties and she manages the leprosies department of an hospital in Phonm Penh for almost 3 years. Actually exactly 2 years and 7 months. She has still 5months to go before she can go back to Cuba to be reunited with her daughter and her husband. She is counting the days, one after the other but she has no choice. As a doctor in Cuba she makes 20$ per month and it is not enough to support her family.
So she bravely decided to leave her country and her family in the only aim of accumulate money for her beloved ones. Cuba doesn’t allow a husband and her wife to move abroad together, to make sure they will come back … I wish A. lots of courage for the last months.
I visited A., she is a cuban doctor in her forties and she manages the leprosies department of an hospital in Phonm Penh for almost 3 years. Actually exactly 2 years and 7 months. She has still 5months to go before she can go back to Cuba to be reunited with her daughter and her husband. She is counting the days, one after the other but she has no choice. As a doctor in Cuba she makes 20$ per month and it is not enough to support her family.
So she bravely decided to leave her country and her family in the only aim of accumulate money for her beloved ones. Cuba doesn’t allow a husband and her wife to move abroad together, to make sure they will come back … I wish A. lots of courage for the last months.
THE MUNICIPAL DUMP
14 Nov 2004
Great farewell party last Saturday night on a teakwood house floating on the Mekong: I went to bed at 4h15AM … my alarm clock rang at 5h30AM. Quite a short night! I wanted to accompany a friend who regularly goes to the municipal dump of Phnom Penh from 6h30 to 8h30 to assist the team of local volunteers who provide daily food and nurse services to about 700 children of the area (with the N.G.O. “ Pour Un Sourire d´Enfant”). The children are asked to take a shower before they can get a plate of rice with some pieces of vegetables and meet. It is most likely their only meal of the day. We sit on a bench, 2 or 3 girls stand a meter away from us, staring at us. After a minute, they suddenly jump on our laps, holding our arms and cuddling us. Big smiles and shiny looks under dirty faces. They look like they had the latest “Hawaiian blond” hair dyeing, but in fact their pieces of blond hair is due to malnutrition.
Within a few minutes, one is already asleep on my lap. She probably worked all night on the dump like many others.
In the nursery (an open-air wooden room with a single table as furniture), we start putting disinfectant and bandages on all the wounds that are displayed to us. (I must say that I swiftly realized my severe limitations as a nurse that morning …!) incinérer
Lots of open wounds, burns and infections. Most of them due to the sharp metal sticks used to pick up stuff and by the plastics constantly being cremated on the dump on which the kids walk.
At the horizon, the huge pile of dump where tens of adults and children wearing boots and long clothes to protect themselves from injuries consciously pick up stuff from the junk. One little boy with a Xmas hat decorated with two Mickey ears coming back from a night of hard work is passing by us. Much work is actually done during night shifts from 3PM to 8AM because it is the time when the municipal trucks bring the rubbish form the city. Once their work is finished, they sell their daily bag of collected recyclable dump to a business guy who pay them about 1000 riels: 0,25 $.
On the way back, a small boy is playing with a car that he is pulling with a string, it is a box of hair dyeing Garnier, “Because you worth it”.
Great farewell party last Saturday night on a teakwood house floating on the Mekong: I went to bed at 4h15AM … my alarm clock rang at 5h30AM. Quite a short night! I wanted to accompany a friend who regularly goes to the municipal dump of Phnom Penh from 6h30 to 8h30 to assist the team of local volunteers who provide daily food and nurse services to about 700 children of the area (with the N.G.O. “ Pour Un Sourire d´Enfant”). The children are asked to take a shower before they can get a plate of rice with some pieces of vegetables and meet. It is most likely their only meal of the day. We sit on a bench, 2 or 3 girls stand a meter away from us, staring at us. After a minute, they suddenly jump on our laps, holding our arms and cuddling us. Big smiles and shiny looks under dirty faces. They look like they had the latest “Hawaiian blond” hair dyeing, but in fact their pieces of blond hair is due to malnutrition.
Within a few minutes, one is already asleep on my lap. She probably worked all night on the dump like many others.
In the nursery (an open-air wooden room with a single table as furniture), we start putting disinfectant and bandages on all the wounds that are displayed to us. (I must say that I swiftly realized my severe limitations as a nurse that morning …!) incinérer
Lots of open wounds, burns and infections. Most of them due to the sharp metal sticks used to pick up stuff and by the plastics constantly being cremated on the dump on which the kids walk.
At the horizon, the huge pile of dump where tens of adults and children wearing boots and long clothes to protect themselves from injuries consciously pick up stuff from the junk. One little boy with a Xmas hat decorated with two Mickey ears coming back from a night of hard work is passing by us. Much work is actually done during night shifts from 3PM to 8AM because it is the time when the municipal trucks bring the rubbish form the city. Once their work is finished, they sell their daily bag of collected recyclable dump to a business guy who pay them about 1000 riels: 0,25 $.
On the way back, a small boy is playing with a car that he is pulling with a string, it is a box of hair dyeing Garnier, “Because you worth it”.
Tuesday, November 16
Sunday, November 7
Wednesday, November 3
Soon in Europe !
I will come back for a break to Europe in December and January !
The plan is to stay:
- in Nancy from the 3rd to the 11th of December
- in The Netherlands from the 12th to the 22nd of December
- in Nancy again from the 23rd of December until the first week of January 2005
Then I will spend 2 weeks in Birmingham,UK somewhere end of January for a VSO training.
I will squeeze in my schedule Paris for a few days and maybe Bordeaux or Geneva !
I will let you know soon where will be my next assignement with VSO. They offered me Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia, Vanuatu and ... Vietnam ! My preference goes to this last offer: Marketing Advisor in a training school for disadvanted children (www.hoasuaschool.com), it is in Hanoi. :-)
For those who wanted to know my complex flight details, you'll find it below:
Phnom Penh - Bangkok
01 Dec 10h20-11h25
flight #: TG 0697
Bangkok - Delhi
01 Dec 14h10-16h55
flight #:IC 0858
Delhi - London
02 Dec 03h25-07h35
flight #:BA 142
London - Paris
02 Dec 10h25-12h40
flight #:BA 312
The plan is to stay:
- in Nancy from the 3rd to the 11th of December
- in The Netherlands from the 12th to the 22nd of December
- in Nancy again from the 23rd of December until the first week of January 2005
Then I will spend 2 weeks in Birmingham,UK somewhere end of January for a VSO training.
I will squeeze in my schedule Paris for a few days and maybe Bordeaux or Geneva !
I will let you know soon where will be my next assignement with VSO. They offered me Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia, Vanuatu and ... Vietnam ! My preference goes to this last offer: Marketing Advisor in a training school for disadvanted children (www.hoasuaschool.com), it is in Hanoi. :-)
For those who wanted to know my complex flight details, you'll find it below:
Phnom Penh - Bangkok
01 Dec 10h20-11h25
flight #: TG 0697
Bangkok - Delhi
01 Dec 14h10-16h55
flight #:IC 0858
Delhi - London
02 Dec 03h25-07h35
flight #:BA 142
London - Paris
02 Dec 10h25-12h40
flight #:BA 312
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