Final Numbers!

Final Numbers:
This post is copied from our fearless leader - Caroline


Our expedition is over - most of us are home now and going through some culture shock and of course dealing with jet lag. For such a huge group, we were an amazing team that worked hard with an exhausting schedule in just 8 short days. We want to thank all those that have followed our blogs, donated money, toys, stickers, hats, t-shirts and everything else. Your generosity is amazing and so much appreciated.

Here are our final numbers:

over $53,000 raised and priceless in-kind donations

350 children & 40 chaperone's went to camp (including transportation, lodging, meals & clothes) to see the ocean and have fun! (they traveled by bus up to 14 hours to get to camp!)

250 bikes given to every child in our scholarship program in 5 different towns

10 kg. of rice, 10 kg. of dried beans, 5 kg. of sugar, 1 box of instant noodles and some candy :) to 280 families (that's enough to feed a family of 4-6 people for a month!)

700+ "fun bags" given to school children in 5 different villages - the fun bags were 100% made with donations of toys, clothes, stickers and drawings (mostly from school children in the U.S.)

350 "fun bags" given to all the children that attended camp.

2 new houses started in Rach Gia (Kien Giang)

2 houses renovated in Tan Hoi Trung (Dong Thap)

1 new house started in Tan Hoi Trung

1 house renovated in My Hiep (Dong Thap)

1 new house started in My Hiep

2 houses renovated in Sa Dec (Dong Thap)....all in 5 days*

we also funded the construction of 2 new houses (1 in My Hiep and 1 in Sa Dec)

for medical check ups:

in Rach Gia (Kien Giang - day 1 - 82, day 2 - 275, day 3 - 182, total= 539

47% were treated for parasites, 100% of the patients work and live in the garbage dump

in Tan Hoi Trung (Dong Thap) day 4 - 277 total (192 under age 18, 2 needed follow up)

in My Hiep (Dong Thap) day 5 - 313 (203 under age 18, 5 needed follow up)

in Sa Dec (Dong Thap) day 6 - 231 and 7 kids at our orphanage...

a grand total of 1367 patients in 6 days

after flying thousands of miles to get to Vietnam we then traveled:
120 miles via plane to Rach Gia (Kien Giang)

70 miles from Rach Gia to Cao Lanh (Dong Thap) by bus and two ferries - 6 hours

10 miles from Cao Lanh to Tan Hoi Trung (Dong Thap) by bus and tuk tuk - 1 hour

15 miles from Cao Lanh to My Hiep (Dong Thap) by bus - 45 minutes

25 miles from Cao Lanh to Sa Dec (Dong Thap) by bus and one ferry - 1 hour

85 miles from Sa Dec to Saigon/HCMC by bus - 4 hours

15 miles from edge of Saigon to our hotel by bus - 1 hour

75 miles from Saigon to Long Hai (for camp) by bus - 3 hours

80 miles from Long Hai back to Saigon by bus - 3 1/2 hours

*our bike team traveled 100 miles from Cao Lanh to Saigon in 12 hours and survived!We're already looking forward to the next expedition (I think!)...thanks again for all your support! More pictures will be posted soon!THANK YOU for being the Catalyst for positive change for the children of Vietnam!

I am exhausted just reading about what we did!!! It seems surreal!

we are home!

We are finally home! We got in around 10 pm last night. I have never been so happy to see our little house!!!! The flight home was LONG! We flew straight from Singapore to NJ, about 18 hours. Maya barely slept, which means I barely slept. Maya was then up at 6 am! I feel like I've been run over by a truck!!!!!!
Glad to be home :)

The girls go shopping!!!!

goodnight Vietnam!

smoothies at Gloria Jean's
The Rex Hotel

Okay, we did some serious shopping damage today!!!!! Maya and I set out at 8:30 and just returned. We hit the Tax Store, which is a mall like place with 3 floors of everything you could imagine! For example we bought beautiful embroidered t-shirts, $2.00 each, au doi's for $4.00 a piece, embroidered wall hangings, $15.00, you get the picture! Now we just have to find space in the lugguage to fit everything!


Maya was a pro. She had her own purse filled with Dong, Vietnamese currency. I'm not sure how much she started with, but she has a little left over :) She insisted on paying for her own stuff with no help from me!


We ended our shopping spree with smoothies at Gloria Jean's, the coffee shop. It was soooo nice to have something ice cold! I still have yet to find an iced cold Diet Coke!!!


We leave tonight on a 7:50, pm flight to Singapore. In Singapore we have a 12 hour lay over. Fortunatley the airport has a transit hotel. We'll check in, catch a good night sleep and hop on a 22 hour flight from Singapore to Newark. We should arrive in Newark around 6 pm on Thursday. We are both excited to get home. We have been missing everyone!


So long from Saigon!

Back in Saigon

The Opera House
The Carvel Hotel


Well, it's our last night in Vietnam. to celebrate Maya and I just ordered room service! Spaghetti no sauce, just butter for Maya and steak and fries for me, we are soooooooo excited!!! The food this trip has been very, very traditional. At times I had no idea what I was putting in my mouth. I just opened and hoped for the best!!! So tonight we are jazzed to have a good solid meal! The only thing missing is diet coke! I have seen a diet coke in 2 weeks! Instead i went for a tiger beer!


Being back in District 1 is bring back so many memories from when I was here for Maya's adoption. We are staying in the Huong Sen Hotel, right around the corner from the Carvel Hotel which is where we stayed 9 + years ago. The area has developed beyond belief. It's more like 5th Ave! The smell is gone and the shops and resturants have sprung up! The prices have gone up a tad as well! Every shop we went into the shop workers looked at Maya and asked "Vietnam baby?, I give you a better price". We got some neat stuff! We are off to the market tomorrow to finish up our shopping. We have a flight out at 8 pm, so we have most of the day, YEAH!!!!
The largest change is that we can actually cross the street with relative ease! when we were here before gail and I never crossed the street! Maya and I crossed many today and did not totally fear for our lives. They finally have signal lites and cross walks! You still have to be careful, but most motorists obey the signals. In 1999 there were no signals and nobody obeyed any type of road rules!!! Crossing the street literally meant you had a very, very good chance of being run over!

We have arrived at Binh Chau, Ho Coc. This is a ecotourist resort that is amazing!!!! This is our little bungalow!
Maya outside our little house
We did a mud bath! This resort sits on hot springs with theraputic mud! We sat in a giant tub of really hot water, got out smeared our selves with the "mud" and baked in the sun. Then we got back in the fiant tub to rinse off! We had such a blast!!
Maya and friend Zach, riding on an elephant at the ppol!
This place is beautiful. The gardens are amazing. There are acres and acres of green space and gardens, a far cry from all of the other places we have been!
The entire team has arrived at the resort. This is our last day and night all together. we are having a big cook out tonight as a farewell. Everyone will go their seperate ways tomorrow. Maya and I will be heading to Saigon for 1 and a half more days. We plan to shop, shop, shop!!!! Afew other families are heading there as well. We leave Vietnam at 10 pm Wednesday night. We fly to Singapore and have a 12 hour lay over, then we ly straight from Singapore to Newark, 22 hours on the plane non-stop!!! While we are in Singapore we will get a Transit hotel room in the airport. In the moring we will take a 2 hour tour of Singapore and then head back to the airport. We should arrive in Newark at about 6 pm!
We will be glad to get home, but sad to say good-bye to so many new friends! This has been a fabulous experience! We have seen sooooooo much and really experienced Vietnam in a way we never could have on our own!!!!

A woman selling squid and shrimp, she'll even cook it for you, Yum
arts and crafts at camp
fresh seafood anyone?
a young boy recieving a new bike and food for his family
these are paper cranes that maya recieved as a gift from a child at one of the schools

a day at the beach!

Today we spent the day at the beach. It was camp day! All 300 of the children that Catalyst sponsors plus our 25 kids and 80 or so adults took over a large section of beach for games, food and swimming! It was amazing!

Imagine 300 kids that have never left their villiage, never been in a hotel and never having a day off from work enjoying 1 entire day that was designed just for them! We played games did arts and crafts and just had fun. the kids were so delighted. My favorite was the little girl in the tiarra! Every little girl whether they live in a dump in Kien Gang or in a penthouse on 5th ave. should have a tiarra!!!!

The day started with "organized" games. That last about 30 minutes. All the kids wanted to do is go in their rooms and take showers!!! I guess having never seen a shower it was a much larger attraction than any of us could provide! After lunch we brought our kids back to our hotel for hang time while the Catalyst kids showered, again and rested. Many of them did not feel well after lunch. the poor babies ate so much food they were sick. this is probably one of the first meals they did not have to gather on their own, imagine what that must have been like for them!

we then all gathered for dinner and skit night. the children all put on skits, it was hilariuos. We were treated to traditional dance, music and song.

Tomorow we say good-bye to the kids and head off for our last day as a team. We are spending the day and night at a hot springs resort, about 45 miles from Long Gai. i can't remember the name of the place! It will be our celebration day for loads of hard work!

This trip has been incrediable. Maya and I have made friends that I hope will continue to be friends for many years. as I sit here freshly showered and comfy I can honestly say that I am so glad we did this trip. It has been rewarding, eye opening and some of the hardest work I have ever done. I am so proud of Maya who has worked her little tail off with very little complaint. She has been bagging 10 pound bags of rice, helping to move 100 bikes from one space to another, helped children learn new games without understanding a single word they said. She has been out of bed and ready to move to a new site by 5:30 in the morning and she has figured out friendships with 25 children from all over the country. During most of this time she has done all of this with a smile on her face!

I am ready to come home, eat some good food and sleep in a comfy bed! It didn't help when Gail reported to me what Tyler Florence was cooking on the food network, TEEHEE! Seriously though, we have tried some really, really traditional foods. Some was fabulous and some was not. I have to say that one of my most favorite things was fried sticky rice balls, simply amazing!!!

I am off to bed. Hopefully we will have internet at our next spot and I will post more!

Martha