Thanksgiving in Delaware! Harry Potter! Aivi's engaged!

Man, I am so behind in posts!  After Honduras, school started and it was non-stop since.  I'm so glad we're on Christmas break...Time to rest, relax, and recap what's been going on!

Thanksgiving in Delaware:
When it comes to food, the "Nguyen Thanksgiving" never disappoints.  Every year my family from my Dad's side flies over and we spend three days of non-stop eating-Turkey, ham, roast beef, goose, mash potatoes, pies, buttery veggies, you name it!  My brother tried something new this year- fried turkey.  It was an overall success and he produced the moistest and juiciest turkey I've tasted thus far (even the white meat was super moist).


Richard helping out with the turkey

I was also able to see my lovely cousins from Chicago and meet Luca's girlfriend, Caitlin.  The three days included go-karting, Harry Potter, seeing my UD friends, celebrating my uncle's birthday, and hanging out with the family.  The old saying is true...There's no place like home!


Our family loves congregating around the kitchen


1st Annual Go-karting



Aivi and Jeremy!
Thanksgiving also gave us a chance to celebrate Aivi and Jeremy's engagement!  Congratulations! I'm so happy for you two.  I can't wait to celebrate the engagement Vietnamese-style!  Most of us knew this was going to happen, we just didn't know when.  I'm so glad we were able to be together during the holiday to celebrate such a memorable day for both families.  My prayers and blessings to you both! XOXO.

The official proposal happened hours before my arrival into Philly.  Lam was there to film the whole thing and take pictures.  It's all on FACEBOOK.  Check it out and enjoy!


Handsome couple...Although the dog was almost about to steal the show in this picture!

Now that Christmas is approaching...Our family will be celebrating in California and preparing for my aunt's long-waited wedding on New Year's day (a whole new post on THAT).  It will be a fun, busy, tiring, but LOVING Christmas!  Let's not forget the real meaning of the season though!  CHRISTmas!   

The Long Journey Home

July 12-13-14th 2010

Back to America via El Salvador

How do I start? Our travel home started off pretty smoothly. We got through security, went on the plane and sat comfortably in our seats. And then a storm rolled in. Our flight was cancelled and there was to be no more flights out of the country until....NEXT WEEK?! Yes, the Honduran government decided to shut down the international airport to do construction. We had no idea. We ended up staying in Honduras for an extra night and waited for find out what would happen with the flights. Lucky for us, Global Brigades made sure that we were safe and told us that we had to drive ~6 hours to get to El Salvador and fly back to LAX. So here I am, blogging this while sitting comfortably in my apartment in Brea, CA. :)

Part of me is happy to be home, take a hot shower, and see all my family and friends again. Another part of me will miss the experience I had in Honduras. Day times that consisted of brigades and evenings that consisted of card games, dinner, Mafia, bonding and the sunset view. We were there for exactly 15 days. 8 Medical brigades, 2 public health brigades, 2 free days, and 3 travel days. It’s been busy and I’ve learned so much. I really appreciate all that Global Brigades has done for us. It’s such an organized program and all the staff members were enthusiastic and passionate about what they were doing. If you are ever interested in doing some type of volunteer work outside of the U.S., definitely check out Global Brigades at this website. Click here for Global Brigades.

Day 14: Last day of Public Health

July 11, 2010

Last day working

Forrest doing the slip and slide on the muddy grass

We continued our second day of public health brigades in Encinal. We were able to finish the flooring in the third room and finish the stove. It was intense. Andrew and Dave took the day off to get ready to leave tomorrow (and watch the world cup). Even though we lost two people, it felt like we lost four! They were so helpful and were truly missed today. Nonetheless we finished mixing cement and laying down cement with our blood, sweat, and tears…I will probably pop some Ibuprofen tonight before bed.

The finished stove area

The finished floor

Photo with the family

It's raining, AGAIN!

Day 13: Public Health Brigade

July 10, 2010

First day of Public Health Brigades in the town of Encinal

Man, talk about manual labor in a tropical storm! I never mixed and patted down so much cement in my life. One day when I have kids I will tell them about the time I worked super hard in a third world country…Mixing sand, gravel, and cement with my bare hands...Building a cement floor…Making a stove…And doing it all in the rain storm.

Mixing concrete

laying down the cement

2 parts cement, 10 parts dirt, 15 parts tiny rocks, 1000 parts hardcore strength

We embarked on our first public health brigade where we built cement floors and a stove for a family in the village of Encinal. The family we met had a small mud house with three rooms inside. There are currently 11 people living in the house. The house only had dirt floors. You see this very often in Honduran homes and most of the skin infections, digestive problems, and parasitic infections we see in clinic are associated with these poor living conditions. Even though today was a physically demanding day, it was well worth it. When the family found out that we were coming to lay down cement flooring they were so appreciative. The father of the house is 55 years old and he was so excited that his home would be transformed. He also helped us mix the cement and to be quite honest, he was faster than most of the guys in our group (no offense!).

The inside floor of the house. We created cement floors for 3 rooms.

The owner of the house

We were able to finish a big part of the flooring but will be coming back again tomorrow to lay down the 2nd layer of cement. After leaving the home, we had a lot of time to spare so we visited the boy’s orphanage that Global Brigades helps support. The compound is called Flor Azul, translated as Blue Flower. Some of the children entered the orphanage because their parents were either deceased, unable to support them, or incarcerated. There are about 61 children living at Flor Azul. Through this orphanage, the boys are able to go to eat, sleep, play outside, and go to school onsite. On their free time, some of the boys make beaded and weaved bracelets for the visitors who come by. In order to get funding, some of the bracelets are sold along with other items in a store in Nuevo Pariso. All of the funds get donated to the orphanage. On top of that, at our compound in Rapaco, there is a small shop that is set up every evening selling t-shirts, drinks, and memorabilia. All of the money collected here also goes to the orphanage, specifically the college fund for the boys. Moses, one of our public health brigade staff members used to live at Flor Azul.

Learning how to make a bracelet

Dayanthi taught him French while he taught her Spanish

Day 12: Day off!

July 9^th, 2010

Happy Birthday Dayanthi!

Today is Dayanthi’s birthday! We all surprised her with a piñata and a big chocolate cake. I’m pretty sure she was caught off guard because we did a surprise bash right after one of our nightly meetings. I hope she enjoyed it all! It’s so wonderful to have memories of celebrating your birthday in Honduras, these are treasured memories! What made today even better was the fact that it’s our day off from work so we could enjoy the city of Tegucigalpa and the Valle de Angeles.

Chirag at the top of the Myan stairs

Watching the group walk up

View from the top

Jesus statue

If you don’t know, there is a huge, I mean HUGE statue of Jesus Christ at the top of the hill in Tegucigalpa. One of our first things to do was to see the famous Jesus statue and the Myan temple that was meters away. First we entered into the National park where the “Jesus Christo” statue stood and enjoyed the scenic view of Tegucigalpa from the hill. Ron brought his professional camera so there was a fun photo shoot with the group near the Myan ruins. After the park, we drove to the Valle, one of the most touristy places of Honduras. This was where we ate lunch and did our tourist shopping. Lunch was at a small place called “Virginia’s Papusa.” Papusa means a potato like tortilla filled with meat and cheese that gets pan fried. It is special to Honduras so we all tried out a few for lunch. I thought it was pretty tasty! After eating about two, I was full.

Jen and the papusas

Break time

Shopping was really fun. I really wanted to pick up something for Hannah and Danvi so I bought wooden Honduran bookmarks with their names engraved. The Liempera to the dollar is 18:1. Shopping is most definitely in the dollar’s favor. I later bought a beautiful painting from store across the street from Virginia’s Papusa. It’s a lovely picture of three callie lilies. I think it would be perfect for my bedroom. It was only $10!

Day 11: Last day of Medical Brigading

July 8^th, 2010

Last medical brigade in El Zurzular

A grandmother taking her grand child to the clinic

Our last day in El Zurzular started out being a little difficult. It rained again last night so our bus had a lot of trouble crossing the multiple creeks and muddy bridges. At one point, the bus got stuck going up a hill so half of the students had to leave the bus in order to lighten the weight. It was such a funny scene; some of us were outside cheering for the bus while the others were inside the bus, hanging on to dear life. The road was rockier than usual and it took close to 3 hours to get to the village.

I worked the triage station again, this time with Jen and Chirag. This was my third time working the station and I was happy to see that my Spanish has improved! Medical Spanish phrases were coming to me more quickly and I understood more. We saw less than 200 patients today. This was probably a good thing because many of us have been getting sick. At first it was only 2 or 3 people but now 6 or 7 people are feeling under the weather. One has parasites, or so he thinks. I think people will start getting better soon because we’ll be getting more sleep and rest tonight. Tomorrow is a free day!

A family saying bye to us as we left on the bus

A final group picture in the village before leaving

Day 10: Brigade in the village of El Zurzular

July 7th, 2010

El Zurzular Brigade day 1: This village is visited by Global brigades very often. Global Water Brigading was done a year ago so the village now has chlorinated water. This resulted in a huge decrease in the amount of parasitic infections. Due to the tremendous amount of rain from the night before, it took over 2 hours to drive to the village. This is our last village and most of us have already rotated in to every station. I signed up for pharmacy and also rotated in with the OB/GYN clinic.

When rotating with Dr. Jenny, our OB/GYN doctor, I performed 2 pap smears! It was quite the experience. I was nervous in the beginning because I had never done it before. The whole experience was quick. First I observed the procedure and then after some time I performed two of them. Shital was also there to help me practice and learn about the different instruments. I really appreciated that.

After rotating out, pharmacy was slammed with prescriptions all throughout the afternoon. We ended up doing over 500 prescriptions! Thankfully there were a lot of people working the pharmacy and most of us were already experienced in getting the medications together. Because of the volume of patients, we did not end up leaving the village until 6PM…Which means that we got back to Rapaco at 8PM. By the time we got home, we quickly ate dinner and then went straight to bed.

The line waiting for us when we arrived. It stretched up the hill.

Day 8 and 9: Brigading in the village of El Plan

El Plan was located roughly 2 hours from our compound. It was up a steep hill with tiny dirt roads so our bus wasn’t able to make it all the way there. This meant that we had to park the bus at the bottom of the hill and walk to the top to reach the village. Our clinic was set up at their local El Salud, which means health clinic.

The line at El Plan village

After rotating in the other stations, today was my day to rotate into dental. I was happily surprised with how much fun I had! Let me tell ya’ll something, Dental brigading is definitely HARDCORE. Two of our Western U students, Esther and Crystal, were in there kicking total butt on everything. They were assisting with fillings and teeth extractions, even doing some on their own with the dentist’s guidance. I worked mostly with Esther and she is a freakin’ rock star when it comes to extractions. I can’t believe how much she’s learned from brigading on this trip. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be much help since they seemed to have the pattern down and I’m not a dental student. But everyone was great at teaching me what I needed to do to help out. Soon enough, I was there helping out with extractions and I even helped one of the dentists do a suture on the gums! That totally blew me away because I wasn’t expecting to do much but hand tools over to those who knew what they were doing.

Hardcore dental extraction

The dental station also is the most tiring because this station is always the last to finish. You really need to be focused because you’re dealing with sharp tools and a lot of blood. Just so you know, medical brigades and dental brigades involve risk. You’re dealing with infectious diseases, blood, sharp instruments, and a constant stress of wanting to see everyone in the most time-efficient way. Two of my classmates on the trip are currently battling some sort of illness. And many of us are dehydrated due to the heat and clinic conditions.

July 6^th, 2010

El Plan Brigade day 2

She was very shy

Today I went back to Triage. It was even hotter today than yesterday so I’m glad Triage was set up outside of the clinic in the shade. It was a half day today because we were able to see everyone fairly quickly. Usually the second day of a brigade is smaller in number than the first. Second day brigading is usually a men’s clinic; although, it’s still open to women and children. Due to my lack of Spanish, I needed to have a translator nearby but lucky for me my translator was Shital, the CEO and founder of global brigades! She is phenomenal and only 29 years old! During the breaks between patients, I was able to talk to her about how global brigades started.

Global Medical Brigades began in 2003 with only a few undergraduate students, one of them being Shital. From there and throughout her studies in graduate school, they continued their trips to countries that needed medical help and recruited friends and colleagues to join them. Within 7 years the brigades expanded and they added dental brigades, public health brigades, and water brigades. The increasing size of the program led Shital to leave her profession as an orthopedist, in order to take over the program as the CEO full time. She now splits her time between Chicago, Honduras, and Panama. Shital will be with us for one more day for our next brigade. I can’t wait to talk to her some more! I wonder if they have a brigade that goes to Asia…

Day 7: JULY 4th, Honduran Style!

July 4^th, 2010

Independence Day!

Tom all dressed up and ready to wake up the British volunteers

The day started off quite early- 6:15 AM. Our group, along with the other American volunteers at the compound, wanted to do a “special American” wake-up call to the British volunteers in the compound down the hill. It started off with a marching drum led by Tom and all of us wearing red, white, and blue. We marched down the hill, mimicking a battlefield entry and barged into the British room. Someone then read the whole Preamble out loud while we all hummed the star spangled banner in the background. The whole thing was quite hilarious because everyone was half asleep in the room but we were this hyper bunch with U.S.A flags and handmade poster boards saying “Give me liberty or give me death!”, “We have Beckham!” , things of that sort.

So back to today…It was our first day off from Brigades (Yay! A much needed break!). I definitely needed some quiet time alone, chilling. I kind of wanted to see Mayan ruins or go explore Honduran culture but that would have been a 9 hour drive. Instead we had a BBQ pool party at a place down the hill at Club Campestra, 10 minutes away.

Time to throw people in the pool!

Lunch was pretty good. I hadn’t had BBQ American-style chicken in awhile so I was really craving that. The pico de gallo and avocadoes here are delicious! Most of us just lounged around; some were swimming and some were playing cards for the majority of the time. I was in the latter group. For some reason, card games have been the game du jour for this trip. We play cards after every brigade in order to decompress. We take a break for dinner and then play some more until people want to go to bed. It’s funny, actually. This is probably happening since there is no internet connection and the one TV here is occupied by the soldiers/security guards. Oh well, nothing beats a good card game of 13 (Vietnamese way)!

Paddling in the murky waters of Honduras

Forrest horseback riding with Fred babysitting

After dinner we got together and enjoyed fireworks, Honduran style. It may not have been a Disneyland style display but I at least saw some flashing lights in the sky! The staff worker lighting up the fireworks had no fear. He straight up shot the fire work tube through his hands instead of laying it on the ground. Talk about bravery, but borderline crazy!

Nostalgia: last year on this day, I was also speaking broken Spanish but it was in Seville, Spain. So it’s been two years since I celebrated July 4^th in the states. I should make sure I’m celebrating in the U.S. next year…I’m starting to forget what it’s really like!

Day 5 and 6: Brigade in Hoya Grande

July 3rd, 2010

Hoya Grande Brigade day 1 (July 2^nd). Population ~ 1,300. Poverty level is around $20 a month for the average Honduran family. The village is located up on a mountain which requires us to drive for roughly 1.5 hours. Water storage is a problem and they only receive water every 8 days. Our brigade was set up at their school building. Each classroom was used for one station.

The 800 person line

Today was the end of the Global Brigade in Hoya Grande. Over the last 2 days, we saw almost 1,100 patients (~850 on day 1 and 200 on day 2)! Keep in mind that the population of the village is 1,300-so we basically almost saw everyone and their mothers, literally. On day 1, I worked in the pharmacy (pharmacia) with Dayanthi and Chester. Oh my goodness, I never worked so hard in a pharmacy before. We were NON-STOP from about 9:30AM until 6PM? I can’t even remember! We worked so much that we completely forgot to eat lunch. It wasn’t until Chester asked Tom if people were already eating lunch. I think the pharmacy was pretty stressful. It’s probably because we got really tied up with amount of prescriptions on that day. In one day we saw almost 800 people! Thank goodness Alec and Dana came into help us, we would have been swamped without them. I learned a lot about the medications and dosages. I know now that anti gripe means anti-cold, anti tos-anti cough, anti hoga- antifungal. I can even recall the types of meds needed for that particularly diagnosis (this is what happens when you see the same things over 100 times)!

Fred and Mike taking a quick break

Playing doctor on each other

Hoya Grande part 2

I worked with Dave (from Chicago Loyola Med School) today. He’s so chill and I had a blast working alongside of him. I appreciated his thoughtfulness as well as his realistic approach to medicine. We are student doctors, not doctors so we can’t just rush through patients and think that we know everything. With this superiority complex, we’ll be endangering the lives of the patients and it doesn’t benefit anyone. That is the one thing I liked about him- his humility and understanding that he doesn’t know it all, thus, he won’t act like he does. It is the lives of the patients that are at stake, not our egos. I found his mentality to be very refreshing and I hope to carry it throughout my medical career.

Dave, Greg, and Ecstasy workin' it

Today was also Mike’s Birthday! He turned 25 and the staff got him a cake and we students got him a Global Brigade shirt all signed up with messages. It was like a shirt-greeting card. I think he really liked it!

Mike smiling for the camera before the cake fight

Day 4: Last day brigading in Zarzal

July 1^st, 2010

Working the Triage line and practicing my Spanish

Today I did Triage with Jeanie, Michael, Pallavi, and Dave (from Loyola). I think we all did a great job overall. I was able to learn a lot of medical Spanish today like “tienas algunas alerigias de medicinas?” and a lot more phrases…It was difficult at first because I wanted to say everything in French! I learned so much doing Triage and it was so much fun. I’ll probably do Triage again soon. In total, we saw 297 patients yesterday and 157 patients today. The staff has been incredible with making things easier for us. They are very receptive to any of our suggestions to make this as smooth as possible for everyone.

Gladis came back today! She was so sweet. If I were doing in-takes I would’ve spent so much more time with her. When she came up to me she gave me a pair of butterfly earrings as a gift! I couldn’t believe she did that. I was so surprise and touched by her gift. This will probably be the best souvenir from the whole trip. I wanted to give them back to her but she insisted that I keep it. Yesterday I knew I wanted to give her my Western U bone pen necklace so I made sure I gave it to her today as a memorabilia of our Western U group. J I will miss her!