So tomorrow I'm back to work on my project. Above you can see where I eat lunch and dinner everyday when I'm there. Like I posted before it is .... rural. I'm really excited to go back since now i feel very confident with my new video equipment and I got some addons to my video equipment from my friend Justin. God Bless his little heart as getting electronics and video equipment in Vietnam is quite difficult, at least good equipment.

So I'm out in the sticks again to work more on my epic Multimedia/film. Next week i have to conduct a couple of interviews so I hope I will be able to post more about my trip to Sapa, Vietnam.

I truely can't wait to go back and start working on my video ideas for this project.

Wish me luck.

So it has been awhile since a made a post and it hasn't been for a lack of activity in life. Quite the opposite in fact.

I have been working on my previously posted project like a mad man. Making this storie is requiring quite a lot. I love doing this stuff especially because it is for all the right reasons.

It is funny people ask me how do I get paid for working on personal projects? I said I don't at least not how they think. The payment is the awareness about the people in the project and hopefully the people who view it decide to help in one way or another. That is the only payment needed for all the hours of shooting, editing and interviewing.

Last week I was out in the countryside working the story. I stayed at the Center as it is 40 min away from the closest town. The Center is really in the boondocks of Vietnam. My room was about as simple as it gets. A metal bed with wood on top but no mattress and a pillow. I did have a ceiling fan thank god because it was hotter than the devils toes out there. So here I am in the middle of nowhere and I turn on my blackberry just to see what kind of signal I will get. Surprisingly it shows me that I have EDGE service. Laying in my metal bed I hit my gmail icon to see if it would connect. To my surprise it did. I was surfing the web, chatting and doing email in the middle of nowhere Vietnam all on my phone. This is in fact how I'm writting this post now. Technology just blows my mind sometimes.

At the end of my trip I was waiting at a Bus Station to catch a bus back to Hanoi. Since they don't get many foreigners out in these parts. I was the show for the day. In little less than 5 mins there where grown men, women and children tugging and pulling at me and asking me all kinds of typical vietnamese questions. I had a guy talking to me on my left and he was also touching the hair on my arms with amazement. I had a woman on my right pinching my skin as if it was paint and I was really a vietnamese in disguise. It was all quite comical and I'm sure if some other foreigner was there they would have busted out laughing. None of the vietnamese ment any harm, they were all quite friendly. In their culture, touching and lack of personal space is perfectly acceptable.

Well as I'm back on the bus back to the countryside. Maybe I will catch you online with my blackberry. See you in the digital universe.

Last week I went to the countryside to do some more research into a personal project i'm working on. The setting for the place was beautiful as the newly planted rice was growing and was a lush green. The birds and insects clamor away as the people of this nearly sustainable community work next to them. They grow all their own vegetables, rice and meat and work together to help build houses or to work on other community projects.

I met the director for the community, a jolly, stained and crooked tooth man. He has a kind heart and has worked as a doctor/director for the community for more than half of his life.

He told me about how they had come to receive two more rejections from the outside world. A pair of 9 year old twins who were born with a horrible skin disease called Lamellar ichthyosis or fish scale disease. Their parents had kept them hidden in a dark area of a dirt floor house for most of their lives. The parents must have thought that the skin disease would later go away, but at the age of nine they found themselves abandoning their children at the front gates of this community. The twins were accepted here and treated as normal. Probably one of the few places in the world they would ever feel like that. More than likely they will live out their lives in this community.

The people in this community have lived lives of persecution. Not for something they did or that they could control, but for how they look.

As I listened to the stories and poems of their lives, it immediately breaks down my emotional barrier protecting me and keeping me objective. Their lives were full of isolation, rejection, murder and suicidal tendencies. Only recently in the last 5 years have they felt happiness or that people might care for them.

I spent two days there gathering resources, listening to stories and observing the daily lives and needs of these people. They were so kind to me, a stranger, they are all open and willing to share their life.

On the second day I met up with the poetry club. They read some poems they had written. They were not harsh poems about the hardships they had endured in their life, but poems welcoming me as a friend. After they were finished telling me their poems I was expected to address them. I almost lost it and nearly cried. After 2 days of being consumed by this place, feeling its kindness towards me and seeing the living conditions and deformities of these people, it finally caught up to me. I was emotionally drained. As I'm sure others would be if they listened and saw the same things.

I will go back every week from now until I finish the project. I hope to share more stories later with you.

Thanks for reading.