Her Room...with a View

These are an attempt to give you a step by step view of our walk from the orphanage door to Lucy's room there. Remember, this is considered a nice orphanage, as orphanage standards go. This first photo is of the front entrance. It is actually off of an alley, and across the alley is a large catholic church. (The french occupied Vietnam for many many years, and Catholocism is a common faith here, along with Budhism and Tauism). So, welcome to Go Vap Orphanage


Once you enter the building, you walk to the right and come to this mostly open courtyard. The motorbikes lined up on either side of the courtyard belong, we think, to the many staff who keep the orphange running. The light you see there is sunlight, this is an open atrium type space. We walk through this spot to see that children play and have lessons on the other side of the "parking lot" Instead of walking through their lessons (see pic below) we turn to the left and...


...go up the stairs. This little slide area is used for many things. We've seen children playing here, and we've seen staff members resting here, and we've seen clean clothes drying here. The boy in this photo is a volunteer. On this day these boys were painting the front of the orphanage a clean white color. We've seen many volunteer groups come and go through the busy orphanage. A group of university students-all girls-have come to Lucy's room to play with the babies there. I see them as angels, as for the past 4 months they have brought smiles and love to our little Lucy. At the top of the stairs we find...