Interviewing 21 Hearing Impaired students

16the September 2014

Early start, taxi to Hope school. As in the Mekong delta we interviewed all 21 students to see what has changed in their family situation and how their schooling is progressing.
Due to the nature of their disability the students need a lot more time to finish school. 

The kids were happy to see us and we got plenty of "High Five's".

Please click on photos to enlarge and start slide show.
All photos are: (C) 2014 Copyright CVSG, all rights reserved.  

They use a lot of sign language ...

 Then we started interviewing one by one while everyone else was listening ... or watching. Thu, one of the twins was the first cap off the rank. Everyone was interested what it was all about.

THU

Sadly Thu was not well, she asked to go to the toilet and did not return. She passed out and was found by other students. Thu has got a heart condition, one of her heart valves does not close properly. The condition was not new ... she just needs medication to help her heart function properly. Thu's dad was called and he came to pick up Thu and Trang. 

The father of the twins.

We asked Diep, the vice principal and were told the medication for Thu was about 1.000.000 Vietnamese Dong. A lot of money ... about $50. We immediately decided to give Thu's father the money so he can go and get the medication for her.

Back to the interview ... Trang was next.

It's not easy to tell them apart ...

Such lovely children, crazy and funny the way children are. It was interesting to see how some of them can hear a bit with a hearing aid and a bit of lip reading. Vietnamese pronunciation is hard enough let alone when you have trouble hearing.

Dung talking about her situation

Before we finished we had a little surprise for them. After a discussion with principal and some teachers we decided to give them all a treat. 
" A trip by taxi to the CoOp supermarket. Each student will receive an envelop with 250.000 VND ~ to $12 AUD. The following photos show their excitement !!!

Trang was very excited ...

Yea ...

Thumbs up from Dung

Then we took a photo of the three new students and that was it. Oh no, we still had to  do a group photo ....

Group photo with Uli

Kids dismissed, now we had to work ... organise the outing and negotiate the school fees for 2014 / 15.
Hard work makes the tummy rumble ... the ladies had just the right idea ...

Look ... fine food, good company ...

                         Very delicious food ....

The END ...