Aly and I leave Thursday on a 25-hour flight to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), still known as Saigon to the South Vietnamese. We will be visiting the Ky Quang II Pagoda Handicapped Orphan Center, which houses 216 handicapped children, mostly blind, ages 3 - 20. We are bringing funds raised by the Center for Contemplative Justice here in Nashville, a non-profit that supports a number of international ministries including a school and medical clinic in Ecuador and an AIDS hospice in Bottswana. Having never traveled to the Far East at all, we don't know quite what to expect. We will be staying at a B&B operated by a Swiss Canadian and his English-speaking Vietnamese wife, who are deeply involved in the Orphange, who I met through a French Canadian while traveling to Toronto. Thus, we will have the pleasure of being "hosted" as we learn as much as we can about Vietnamese and Buddhist culture and the place of handicapped children in this Communist society.
Depending on computer access, we will try to post our musings about the trip as we go!
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