Field Trip (or child labor boot camp)

            

The morning started off with a cultural experience right from the school balcony - a Vietnamese funeral celebration in the side yard.  The rain poured down and the music heated up.  Apparently there will be no break in the tunes for three days.  Fortunately it is Friday, and we only had to deal with the background accompaniment for half of the school day.  If you thought you had hit your limit with bagpipes, check out this audio recording of the festivities, and you may be a little less critical of our kilt-clad piping friends.

We ran screaming from the music for an afternoon of immersion in screen printing - a Vietnamese specialty.  We began with a factory tour of a screen printing facility.  Don't tell OSHA, but we hopped over cables, peered at hot ovens, exposed ourselves to weird toxic smells and spent too long standing in a UV free room.  In the end, we had one of the most engaging, hands-on educational experiences ever.  The kids came away screen printing professionals.  They learned the process from start to finish (including cutting and sewing the t-shirt) and had a chance to screen their own cloth and put it through the industrial "oven" dryer.  Pretty cool.

Hand cutting t-shirts

Sewing the t-shirts together

Checking out the automatic screen printer

Screen ready for ink

  

Look at all those colors.



Measuring screen pressure in newtons - who knew
screen printing was such an exact science?



Nolan prepares his fabric



Spreading the ink with a squeegee

Finished product heads into the oven to dry.

Foster's turn



Finally Bri...



Finished product!

Next we visited a local craft shop that employs disabled artists, where one of the crafts is screen printing.  We had a hands-on workshop with the artists there and learned how to make individually customized screen printed shirts.  Everyone had an opportunity to print their own shirt. If we run short on cash at some point this year, I know eight kids who now have a marketable skill that could be put to good use here.

Watching our host prepare a screen

Foster prints a pig

  

Voila!

Nolan prints a pig too.

Drying the pig

Brianna prints bamboo.

The big kid gets a turn too.

The whole crew!

Having endured a long day of screen printing, we headed off to the post office to retreive a package.  A much anticipated event...with three kids' names on the package, requiring three kids present, three kids' passports and three kids' signatures, it was quite an organizational effort to jump through the bureaucratic hoops to get our hands on the package.  At last, with all signatures, kids and passports accounted for, the package was handed over.  Halloween treats!  They must be eaten before the ants descend...what a shame...forced consumption of sweets.  Happy Halloween!