Children and Animals

            Ho Chi Minh City is quite large, with about 10 different districts along the coast. Today, I went to one of the outskirt districts to visit another school. This school is for the Deaf and Disabled (children are either one or both). We met the principle who told us all about his school. The children had won medals in sports (they play badminton, volleyball, tennis, soccer, tug of war) won some medals in calligraphy (how cool would it be for American students to learn calligraphy in public school??) and earned distinguished school for his facility. They even have a local artist come in and teach the students to draw and create really cool silk flowers to sell. They were surprisingly good at both. These children were vibrant, much like the Deaf children I’d met two days before. There was a playground with a merry-go-round and other obstacles. We played with the children there. I met a group of older (around my age actually) Deaf children who successfully communicated their names to me by writing and practiced some of their English writing with me. That was pretty cool. This group was much more hopeful to me because even though they might stay in school longer to complete everything, they wanted to get out there and be in the workplace.

            As this trip ended in the early afternoon, I went with some friends to the zoo. It was kind of far away, but we thought it was closer, so we walked all the way there. They had many of the generic exhibits, giraffes, elephants, a reptile house, monkeys and deer. They had a leopard that was pacing back and forth and lunged at the glass. He was quite irritated, but none of us were able to get a photo of his teeth bared. It would have been really cool. They also had ocelots and some other cool big cats that aren’t often in zoos. After seeing these, we finally found the lions and tigers. They had a white lion, which I’ve never seen before. He was making some sort of sound, not quite a roar, but more like a drone sound. It was quite loud though. I found out after that it was because his cage was right next to a yellow lion’s cage, both of which had their respective lioness. This was a bad idea as they obviously are very territorial and unhappy being right next to each other. Still, it was cool to see them both and compare them. Then, I found the tiger exhibit, which they even had a white tiger! He was very gorgeous! They also had peacocks and other random birds like that. We started walking back after seeing the exhibits, took a wrong turn and took a break at a café. While we were there, it started pouring (remember, it’s the wet season) and we had to walk back in a downpour. Of course, when we got to the shuttle stop, it stopped raining.