Life around the dorm complex

As many of you know, I am living in a huge complex of dormitories. I was told that about 3,000 kids live here-most who are undergraduates. I am on the second floor of the nicest building in the complex. My "wing" has about 6 other rooms that house foreign faculty and students. Right now I have two rooms of Vietnamese women next to me and farther down the hall are three rooms of Chinese students. Everyone is very nice but they speak no English.

The action really is in the courtyard below my room. It is a large brick area that changes functions as the day progresses.



In the early morning (5-6am) you can usually find a bunch of kids playing volleyball and badminton. Later it morphs into kids doing homework and working on group projects



Several days ago it was hot and sunny. I looked out my door and saw the entire area filled with pillows and mats drying in the sun. I wondered what the heck was going on....and was told that the students were told to bring out their bedding to air and dry. I guess some type of a bug was going around and they wanted to "air sanitize" their pillows. Later I saw them washing the pillow covers in large plastic garbage pails!





Several days later I found lines strung up around the area and mosquito nets were being washed and dried. Remember--the dorms are not air conditioned and they have no glass windows-- only wooden shutters and metal bars. So to protect from mosquito bites and other possible nasty problems (malaria--dengue..although I really don't think this is a problem in Hanoi) many people use netting around their beds at night.




The other big change this year is that they are building a new dorm building right next to my building. When I first arrived they started working on the site at 8pm and quit at 5am! As you can imagine, I wore ear plugs all night long!

But this construction site is a huge mess and I am totally amazed at the muck students are living with. Frankie Minor--(head of housing at MU) these next few shots are for you!!!

The following photos are of part of the quad area outside my room. These huge holes with raw sewage running under them sat open like this for weeks. Just days ago they started covering them over.



...and the poor girls living in this building have the construction mess right outside their doors. They have to walk along some old boards to get to their building and the condition of the walkway is something to see to believe.





Looking at these photos would make you believe that things are really torn up here...but it isn't so. Each day the quad area and all the streets are swept clean by a crew of very diligent Vietnamese women. The photo below shows one of the women working early in the morning. I am amazed at how hard they work!



And finally, it is really a great honor to be able to live in this housing complex. Dorm space is limited and only the best and most deserving kids get space. I did a blog entry when I was here before on the rooms and the food service...so if you want to read more about the kid's rooms, check out these two previous blog entries (Dorm LIfe and Boy's rooms.

So......life is never dull here!