Vietnam With My Man!

Me and Justin when we look nice!

I started dating the most wonderful man I've ever known 20 months ago. If you don't already know, his name is Justin Constantino and he's amazing. From the start of our relationship, we both wanted to travel and do service work together. We dreamed of all the places throughout the world we'd like to go and how we could be useful. (Un)fortunately, we both got jobs in our fields after years of searching (Justin's a management analyst for the village of Kenilworth and I'm a nurse at the Illinois Youth Center [Juvenile Prison] in St. Charles). As we each started our new jobs we needed to wait a while before taking any vacation time. Finally, at the beginning of this year we both had a solid start in our current positions and were able to take a trip together.

Me and Justin when traveling for 3 days.

We researched organizations to travel through, having decided that for our first international trip together we wanted something where we didn't have to do too much planning, especially since we wanted to go immediately. I've done many trips like this in the past, so I basically knew what to expect. Justin on the other hand had traveled abroad and done a service trip, but never simultaneously. To ease our way into it together we chose a very reputable organization called International Volunteer Headquarters (IVHQ). It came highly recommended, offered what we wanted, and the fees were reasonable. There were plenty of locations to chose from but we narrowed them down and chose to volunteer in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The view from our apartment in Hanoi.

Near the Old Quarter in Hanoi.

Being a registered nurse, I wanted to use my skills and knowledge as much as possible on this trip. Justin felt the same way about his thorough political administration education. There are some medical placements through IVHQ and opportunities to work with local NGOs, both opportunities interesting us. However, both of those placements require you to commit at least three months to the program. With the obvious choices out, we considered what we could share in doing. We both love children, and honestly felt the history of the war with Vietnam and specifically the use of Agent Orange to be both interesting and specific to that region, so we chose to help with disable children. IVHQ works with a local organization in Hanoi called SJ Vietnam to partner with local placements for international volunteers in the city.

Trung Tâm Phúc Tuệ is a center for care, education, careers adviser, and vocational training for intellectually disabled children. The center currently has around 80 disabled children and teenagers with ailments including Down's Syndrom, Cerebral Palsy, Autism, victims of Agent Orange, and other mental diseases. Phuc Tue was established in 2001 under the Hanoi Relief Association for the disabled children. This was the perfect placement for me and Justin. He was able to assist the teachers in the classrooms, helping the children maintain focus and motivation and playing with them on breaks. I worked with the nurse doing therapy with select children with specific needs on an individual basis. Justin ended up working with me for part of the time because it turned out to be quite a lot of work rehabilitating the children. However, the rest of the kids would beg him to come and stay in their classrooms every day when we arrived. It was so great getting to share the work we did together, it helped to deepen our relationship interacting in such a way. I enjoyed getting to see how loving and creative he was with the children and therapy, and I think he was able to see a little more of my gifts and talents too.