Thoughts from day 8

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

What is most int
eresting on the 8th day of the SEALNet project Vietnam 2007 is the circle painting. Hung and Hiep, our circle painting leaders, arrived at Le Duy Hotel and we all left for 15 May School to start our circle painting.

We arrived at the 15 May School at 10:00AM, and then discussion about circle painting started. During the discussion, we were told that our painting will be exhibited in Singapore and that we expected to get 2 million US$ from this painting. More importantly, the ASEAN Head of State and US president George Bush will meet during this event to celebrate the ASEAN’s 40th anniversary and 30 years of ASEAN-US relations. “WOW” $2 million waiting for us!

After the discussion, Hung and Hiep led us through some activities about movement to get us prepared. We were asked to arrange ourselves into one big circle, then into two circles the second time and overlapping circles the third time. Later on, we were grouped into pairs and learned to move together, being both a leader and a follower through eye contact.

Yeh Yeh! The time we had been waiting for finally arrived. Circle painting got started!!!!!

Anyway, before we painted, we were told about the goals and rules of the circle painting.

Ah Ah!!! Here are the goals:

To create the painting together
To learn, to play and to work together
To appreciate others and yourself
Rules:

Paint in silence
The only word you can say is “WOW”
When you hear a sound, you must stop and then breathe in and listen to the instruction
Hiep, our SEALNet artist, started painting a very small circle in the middle of the canvas and SEALNet project Vietnam members began to paint down to all the edges of the canvas. Yeh!!! We finished the first step, priming the canvas. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you with a cliffhanger, though. If you want to know what happens next withour circle painting, tune in next time (check out day 9 of project Vietnam 2007)!

– Haksym Chhay