All over Vietnam people are doing extraordinary things to provide an education for as many people as possible. Our school has community partnerships with a number of local special schools and orphanages. Most of these schools are places where the parents who are too poor to afford a normal school education, send their children. Normal school costs about $2 US a week, so that's how poor some families are. These schools survive on donations, gifts, the goodwill of the volunteers and the energy of a dynamo who leads the school. Frequently classes from our school do a reciprocal visit to their buddy school. However today children from 2 of our partner schools came to visit our school, after school. As a staff we had to provide an activity for a small group of children. I decided to teach my group how to play some card games. My Vietnamese language is very limited so Mr Tue stepped up and helped out. First game was last card. We didn't take scores, which was just as well. I got soundly beaten 3 games to 1 by new comers, children who had never played the game before! Next game was 7s and I did manage a little better. Two of the children cottoned on how to play and the strategy of holding onto cards to improve their situation and making life harder for their opponents. We had a great deal of fun for 45 minutes. I then offered the cards to the children to take to their school so they could teach others how to play. Sadly that met with a definite thumbs down. Card games in Vietnam are viewed as games of chance and associated with gambling. Ooops. Yes people do play for money, however I thought it would be ideal to play social games and strategy games for fun, especially when some of these children board at the school. What could be better fun than playing last card after lights out!
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