It doesn't matter how much you plan, the big thing I've learnt on this evaluation is that it can all change in a moment. Sometimes it's little things, others are bigger. After our lunch break today, we got in the car to head to another primary school to interview parents of children with disabilities. Only when we stopped at the primary school and other members of the team got out and we kept driving, I asked where we were going. Looks like we were on our wa...

This morning did not start off so well. As I went to bed at the granny time of 8:30pm, I was awake at the ridiculous time of 5am. Since I was behind in both my blog and my interview notes, I thought I'd spend some time on my laptop. At about 6:40am, I was just about getting ready to go down for breakfast (we were leaving at 7:15am) and BANG, I heard this sudden gush of water. Now when I say gust, at first I thought that it was the shower, but then quickly realis...

After another 'oplet' for breakfast at the restaurant (read here two eggs + bread roll), we hit the road in our mini-van for the Huong Phung commune, which is about 25km from our hotel. This is a commune high in the mountains and takes about 30 minutes to drive there. I was going to interview some teachers at the primary school and then do some 'school observation'. It is summer holidays in Vietnam so it is very quiet at the school, but there were some kids b...

Up early this morning and had breakfast with the evaluation team and a 'caphe den' (black coffee). We then walked about 30 minutes to the Huong Hoa ADP Office (the blog photo) and spent a couple of hours going over the schedule for today, tomorrow and Thursday, outlining who we will meet, when and how we will get there. The days are chocka block and time needs to be allowed for travel between places (the furthest commune is 25km away). We've tried to group inte...

The first person I was to interview was the Vice President of the Education Department for the government. I was so nervous, particularly after meeting Mr Khanh as I thought that this VP was going to be a man who was very formal. Yet, when Chau and I arrived to the office, a lovely lady came out and greeted me very warmly. I felt right at ease. The first thing she says to me is "you are very beautiful" and we seemed to hit it off right from there! She spoke ...