Volleyball in Ho Chi Minh City

A perk to coaching volleyball at Vientiane International School is that I get to travel to great places in Southeast Asia.  My school is part of the Mekong River International School Association (MRISA).  There are eight schools that belong to MRISA and each is responsible for hosting a variety of athletic, cultural, and leadership exchanges.  This year, Senior Volleyball MRISA was held at Saigon South International School (SSIS). 

Both boys and girls teams boarded the plane headed for Vietnam on Thursday and after a day of travel arrived at our host school.  I was thrilled to see my friend Stacey who coaches the SSIS girls.  We met last year and she is fantabulous - Canadian too...go figure!  After getting our kids shuttled off to their billets, my colleagues - Mark and Nik and I headed for a coaches meeting and then back to the hotel for some much needed rest.  This was going to be a L-O-N-G weekend!!

Here is a snapshot of our team the beginning of the first day and during a much needed timeout.

The girls having fun doing some ice breaker activities

 Friends Ruth and Dan who are the nicest Brits I know and they teach NISC in Cambodia

Mark organized dinner for the coaches.  We headed to a Vietnamese BBQ place called "Fanny's".  The food was great, but I was surprised when the jumbo prawns came out to us still flopping on the plate!

Here... Suzie, another coach from Cambodia (ISPP) is putting her squeemish tummy to the test and diving into some shrimp!

Nik and I digging in



Our organizer, Mark!

Amazing beef

On our last morning we had a few hours of down time and headed into town to do some shopping.  Here are a few pics from our exploring

 The power lines in HCMC are incredible.  It surprises me that they have any power at all!

This little guy was ADORABLE and loved to ham it up for the camera!

Just a few more sleeps and I'm back to Ho Chi Minh with another group of kiddos!