Today I met a woman with a face right out of the pages of National Geographic. I was told she is 49-years-old, but her face told a different story. Each wrinkle showed her heart ache. You don't need to know Vietnamese to understand she’s had a hard life. We met her on the river bank where she lives in a shanty. Our impromptu tour guide, a school teacher who is volunteering on the build, took us to her. The woman invited us on her rickety boat for a trip down the river. Her frail frame effortlessly rowed us past the grove of underwater coconut trees. It was incredible. I don't know her story, but seeing the pain in her face...you know complaining about our first world problems are ridiculously shameful.
At the work site, things are progressing amazingly. It is cool, and that is helping us get things done faster than expected. The local crews are amazing. They run to fill up their wheelbarrows with cement and run them to fill the holes in the playground. Mind you...they are a lot younger than us. The exuberance of youth. Ha-ha.
Everyone is sore. To be honest, the Castle Downs group is not used to this kind of manual labour. It’s a good thing massages are cheap here - $12 or less for a half hour. The crew is definitely using that to take the kinks out.
