The Ho Chi Minh Community Involvement placement starts off with four days of Culture Week, a fantastic opportunity to get to know the other volunteers we would be living with for the next three weeks. This involved language and culture classes, a tour of the city and its major historical sites, cooking class and Vietnamese towel folding class (the last two of which caused a LOT of laughter!). Then we all started work.

I learned a lot about the culture in Vietnam and was able to explore the famous places in Ho Chi Minh as well. Apart from the amazing time I had during the cultural week, I was more keen for my week of volunteering to come, as that was my main purpose of enrolling myself to this program. I’ve never been happier that I chose to work in a school as I; myself enjoy having children around me.

During the second week I volunteered at the school where I played with children aged from 2 to 5. The children there were happy to see you and wanted to play with you. A lot of them wanted to learn English so in order to achieve that they would point at different things and smiled when you told them what it was.

\"This is roughly how every day went, each one with little quirks and quiet achievements. I remember how amazing it felt to watch the kids learning and growing, even in such a short space of time while I was there – hearing them say my name, words I had taught them, singing songs I had sung to them or games I had taught them. I began to get to know and love the personalities of each of them, it was so gorgeous

Everyday they put you in a different department so you really get to learn many things. For example, you can do acupuncture and injections, physiotherapy with disabled children, X-rays, surgery and more. Personally, my favorite one was the surgery department. It was my first experience in a surgery room and I could really see everything from close. I had the chance to see many big surgeries such as bone graft, nerves reconstruction, internal fixation of broken bones and many more. The doctors are also very welcoming and love to learn more about you. They are also glad to answer any questions about their practice.

This program takes place in an orthopedics hospital in which we would rotate, from day to day, between the many different departments it has to offer. My personal favorites were radiology and surgery, but there are also wound care, rehabilitation (mostly for patients that have had a stroke of children with various physical disabilities), acupuncture and traditional medicine departments.

Some tasks that I performed included removing acupuncture wires and needles, administering B12 or antibiotic injections, cleaning extremely severe wounds, as well as observing and shadowing surgeons. To be able to participate in this project, one should be warned that you will see extremely shocking wounds, and a ton of blood... On the other hand though, if you are ready for it, this project taught me so much, and really opened my eyes to third-world country care and how different countries work. I loved every minute I spent in the hospital, soaking up the miles of information that was available there, even just by observation!

It was quite the eye opening experience to see how efficiently very little resources could be used to yield the maximum care for the patients.The best part of the volunteering was actually being able to do procedures and assist the nurses in their daily activities. I had already been trained in how to do many of the skills, so it was as simple as the nurses showed me how to do them in the Vietnamese way and off I went. The hands on experience you get through Gnarly Troop is second to none.

It was truly an amazing experience. The coordinators were very friendly and accommodating and I learned a lot during my stay. Even though it was crowded, overall the program was great and I would recommend it to anyone. I’ll surely miss everything about Vietnam from its rich history and culture, food, friendly students, to the patients in the hospital who kept asking me if I’m Vietnamese. I’ll especially miss the lifelong friendships I had made.

I was able to help the nurses in their daily rounds; giving injections and medications and setting up IV\'s. All of these skills were learned right at the placement site. Our assistance was really beneficial to the nurses in their daily jobs.