#which les amis have the 3 in a bed living arrangments

[for-the-love-of-javert]

Going to put my other fanfics on hold for a week or two.

I have decided, to dip my toes into the waters of M/M & F/F ships for a couple of fanfics especially for Pride Month. I'm going to try and make them one shots but there may end up being a couple of chapters to at least one of them.

I'm not going to spoil it by saying which characters I'm shipping.

I would however like someone to save me time and trouble by telling me which Les Amis have the 3 in a bed living arrrangement. I might be including something about that in my fic. Not sure when these fics will be ready. I will start on one tonight, it will be posted on ao3 in the next few days. Warning these fics could possibly get very spicy. So if you're not into mature/sexual content I have told you up in advance.

[haitilegends]

WATCH "JEAN JEAN-PIERRE/KISKEYA ORCHESTRA - HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAITI - CARNEGIE HALL #2 " https://youtu.be/tVioPooSG5c @2:59 Ode to JeanDo Comp: Jean Jean-Pierre @ 14:57 Gary French Haiti de Bernard Wah Orchestre Kiskeya de Jean Jean-Pierre "Jean Jean-Pierre, the founder and director of the #Kiskeya Orchestra and its driving force, is a journalist, composer, musician, arranger, playwright, screenwriter, producer and bandleader. His unrelenting passion to affirm his Haitian identity and represent the rich and vibrant culture of Haiti led to the birth of the orchestra. Born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Mr. Jean Jean-Pierre began his training as a drummer and gained invaluable experience as a young musician performing locally with the Bossa Combo Band and with popular recording artists such as Haiti’s star Ansy Dérose, Brazilian vocalist Nelson Ned, and Puerto Rican singer Daniel Santos. He moved to the United States in the summer of 1974 and quickly immersed himself in New York’s music world. Since then he has distinguished himself as a musician and composer, performing with several touring bands whose styles range from R & B to pop-rock. Pursuing his commitment to affirm his Haitian identity and represent the best of Haitian society and culture, Mr. Jean Jean-Pierre began a journalistic career focused on Haitian issues, writing for the Village Voice and United Nations Radio and as a columnist for the Gannett Newspapers – all while writing and producing music. In 1995, along with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme and human rights attorney Michael Ratner, Mr. Jean-Pierre co-founded MAPOU Productions Ltd., dedicated to promoting the rich and vibrant culture of Haiti. The same year, Mr. Jean-Pierre and MAPOU Productions produced Bouyon Rasin, the landmark Haitian-international “roots” music festival. Since then he has produced regular musical events at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Carnegie Hall. In 1995 Mr. Jean-Pierre worked assiduously with Haiti’s Ministry of Culture to help reinstate Haiti to the Convention of Berne (for the protection of author’s rights). Currently Mr. Jean-Pierre is the bandleader and founder of Kiskeya. The Haitian Orchestra and recently composed the Ode to Jean Do, a musical composition in Jonathan Demme’s recently released film, the Agronomist, recounting the life of Haiti’s foremost journalist Jean Dominique, tragically slain on April 3, 2000. In the aftermath of the worst tragedy that has befallen Haiti on January 12, 2010, Mr. Jean-Pierre traveled to the Dominican Republic because he was, as he said :“bolstered by a deep sense of gratitude, for the way our neighbors came to lend their support to Haitians”. A few days later, with the help of Mr. José Rafael Lantigua. Minister of Culture and the great conductor and arranger, Maestro Jose Antonio Molina, he recorded with the Dominican Republic Symphonic Orchestra “Ayiti Leve Kanpe/ Haiti Get Back Up”, an 8 min. time capsule he composed to chronicle the day of the earthquake that took the lives of more than 225,000 people. This was recorded on January 27, 2010 at El Palacio de Bellas Artes. In August 2010, Mr. Jean-Pierre was honored by the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic at the Teatro Nacional during the season opening of the orchestra. The execution of his composition “Ayiti Leve Kanpe/ Haiti Get Back Up” received rousing applause from the audience of a packed house. Jean Jean-Pierre and the Kiskeya Orchestra Founded in 1995 by drummer, composer and arranger Jean Jean-Pierre, the Kiskeya Orchestra is a 25-piece ensemble that combines classical, pop, and the best of Haitian and Caribbean traditional music, all percolating over a hot bed of excitedly syncopated island rythms. The Kiskeya Orchestra is the ancestral home of the Taino people where African and Europeans meet creating a vibrant sonic mélange. The Kiskeya Orchestra surpassed itself in a sterling performance in May 2003 at Carnegie Hall, during the presentation Haiti: The Rythms, the Dances and the gods starring Danny Glover and Theresa Randle. The orchestra’s first CD, entitled 1804-2004 Happy Birthday Haiti, was released in January 2004 on Global Beat Records, Gary Topper is the conductor. Vision While it is irrefutable that the Perez Prado Orchestra, Benny More and the Sonora Matancera – all three from Cuba - were the best known large musical formations in the Caribbean to have influence in the 1950”s and 60”s most musicians from the area, in Haiti, the Issa El Saieh and the Jazz des Jeunes were the musical templates that inspired many generations of musicians. Jean Jean-Pierre’s musical education came from these great bands, which could easily combine the sound of a Benny Goodman or a Cab Galloway with the plethora of Haitian rhythms, a result of a confluence of tribes from Africa. (According to the incomparable Haitian master drummer (Mapou) Azor, Haiti claims more than (95 rhythms and combinations of rhythms.) Jean Jean-Pierre, through his series of annual concerts at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and recordings, uses the Kiskeya Orchestra as the vehicle to promote this music pioneered by those wonderful Haitian orchestras, a sound emulated all throughout the Caribbean. Enabled by its vibrant human and musical mosaic, the Kiskeya Orchestra is poised to continue gracing the worlds’ most prestigious concert halls and stages." Tours May 23, 2003: At Carnegie Hall, Haiti: The Rhythms, the Dances and the Gods, with actor/activist Danny Glover playing the role of Haiti’s independence precursor Toussaint L’Ouverture and Theresa Randle (Bad Boys 1 and 2) portraying Toussaint’s wife Suzanne. Concerts Chanje December 30, 2007 As the bandleader for the latest version of Haiti’s great Jazz des Jeunes, he performed with the band at Tara’s in Haiti with the legendary Sonora Matancera directly from Cuba. June 10, 2005: Replant Haiti the Concert at Carnegie Hall with hosts ator Danny Glover, actress Susan Sarandon and journalist Amy Goodman December 24, 2994: How Papa Noel forgot Haiti, starring Danny Glover. A Haitian Christmas story, it is a parable that finds its power in the dreams of a child October 2004: Billingham Festival, Billingham England August 2004: CIOFF – UNESCO, Folkloriada, Budapest, Hungary January 3, 2004: Carnegie Hall, New York, 1804-2004 Happy Birthday Haiti star studded concert featuring Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, Erna Letemps, Jean Claude Eugene, The Mighty Sparrow, Keith-Designer Prescott, and a plethora of great performes. (Music by Kiskeya: The Haitian Orchestra of Jean Jean-Pierre) June, 2002: Rotary Club International, Les Cayes, Grand Bal Blanc, Music retrospective 60”s and 70’s December 29, 2001: Carnegie Hall, New York: a musical and dance production entitled The Haitian Community Salutes Our Heroes, provided a moving tribute to the victims of the World Trade Center tragedy September 26, 1999: Brooklyn college concert held with Kiskeya Orchestra to honor the life of the great Haitian artist Guy Durosie, who died a month earlier. A constellation of Haitian singers whose careers span stretched from 1946 to the present shared the bill July 28-30, 1995: A landmark International Roots Music Festival in Haiti with Celia Cruz, Boukman Exsperyans, Papa Jube with Wyclef Jean, Simbie (Sweden), Ram and a host of other artists, recording a live CD which received rave reviews in Rolling Stone. Press releases The New York Times, December 2004: “ A Christmas Hope for a Troubled Country” Rollling Stone Magazine, October 1995: “A new Wave” The Beat Magazine, October 1995: “Haitian Fascination” The Haitian Times Weekly, December 2004: “Little Drummer Boy” Listin Diario (Dominican Republic) DVD/CD Happy Birthday Haiti featuring Ossie Davis, Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon (Carnegie Hall, January 2004) The Rythms, the Dances and the gods (Carnegie Hall, May 2003) First Haitian Roots Festival (with Celia Cruz) – Stade Sylvio Cator, July 1995 #Video Watch "Jean Jean Pierre - HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAITI/CARNEGIE HALL #2 Pt 1" https://youtu.be/af689wERp1Y Watch "Jean Jean Pierre - HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAITI/ CARNEGIE HALL #2 pt 2" https://youtu.be/tVioPooSG5c @2:59 Ode to JeanDo Comp: Jean Jean-Pierre @ 14:57 Gary French Haiti de Bernard Wah Orchestre Kiskeya de Jean Jean-Pierre Watch "Jean Jean Pierre - HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAITI/ CARNEGIE HALL #2 pt 3" https://youtu.be/7Zf2EDPJit0 🎶 Listen and Purchase: Culture & Tradition by Jean Jean-Pierre & Orchestre Traditionnel d'Haiti on iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/culture-tradition/id925222519 HAITI☆LEGENDS #JeanJeanPierre #haitilegends #OrchestreKiskeya #balletBaccouloudhaiti #HappybirthdayHaiti

[ashb1997]

“Why do you want to volunteer when you can just earn money or travel anyway?”

The amount of times I got asked this question was actually quiet surprising- don’t get me wrong the majority of people were fully supportive of my decision to volunteer- but there is, as always, just a few who can’t help but stick their nose in where clearly their noses do not belong. So here’s to all your lovely noses- the answer to your question is- WHY NOT?

The benefits of volunteering far outweigh what any “job” will ever give you. Trust me.

“Volunteering is singularly the best decision of my life so far.”

Volunteering is more than slogging out some intense work for the benefit of others-it’s about changing as a person, learning and helping out the community at the same time.

My decision to volunteer wasn’t purely based on the fact that it was going to be ‘life changing’. I knew it would be a wonderful experience but I did not realise how profoundly it would affect me.

So my volunteer story in a quick recap- I volunteered through Lattitude Global Volunteering- a youth based international company that focuses on sending youth across the world in volunteering positions for gap years, uni breaks or short volunteering stints. I was an English Teacher in Vietnam for 3 months. Fresh out of high school I felt I needed to do something with a little bit of support and guidance, rather than just packing my bags and hopping on a plane without ever being out of the country before. Lattitude seemed to me like the right company to do that and it meant that I could travel and see a bit of the world before settling into uni and still do something meaningful.

“LE THANH DUY PRIMARY SCHOOL”                                                                                                         The gorgeous school we worked at, such a beautiful place with gorgeous staff and children. 

So my life during those 3 months went a bit like this- teaching five days a week at a primary school for around 18 hours a week. I also taught at an English centre for around 3 hours a week (sometimes nights, sometimes weekends). Now I know what your thinking- 21 hours a week is not a whole lot of work- and that’s true- it’s not- but add 40 kid classes and 35 degree heat to the equation and then you will understand why somedays I would come home feeling pretty wrecked!

I dreaded going to school and hated the thought of spending 3 months doing it. Fast forward one week later and those thoughts didn’t even cross my mind. Being a small town country girl I found I just had a severe case of culture shock/ homesickness/ and being overwhelmed with meeting so many new people!

Over the 3 months I was volunteering, most of the time I absolutely loved it, at other times I questioned why I chose to volunteer instead of travel, but I always came back to the same answer and it always reassured me of my decision. I was doing it for someone else, for a greater cause and that’s why it was so important.

THE TEACHING

Okay, so just imagine for a minute that you have never really done a lot of public speaking or taught anything to anyone, then place yourself in front of a class of 40 interested , noisy kids that don’t speak your language and are all staring at you like you are this strange thing dropped off from mars and you will feel exactly how I felt those first few weeks/ days. NERVOUS AS ALL SHIT. How the heck am I meant to convey what I want to them? AmI teaching the right content? Do they understand anything I’m saying? Are they saying how dumb I look in Vietnamese?

The first few weeks I felt self concious, nervous and a bit intimidated, but by the end of my three months I would walk into class confident in my abilities. Being in that situation it’s survive or die. You either get up and pretend you know what your doing or fall in a heap and make a total fool of yourself- I was determined not to do the latter so for the first few weeks I pretended like I was confident in what I was doing and Voila- it miraculously turned into actual confidence!

After a while I got into the swing of what I was actually doing and by the end I felt as though what I was doing was really making a difference. To me, it was evident in the way the kids approached different tasks, in their communication skills and of course their English. I believe we were there not only to teach them English but also to instil in them skills which they would not have had to use with a Vietnamese teacher. They had to learn to use all their senses to even understand what we wanted them to do. It was also something I had never really had to do before as well- communicate rules, words, meaning without the use of talking. It was really interesting to work with the kids and learn how to do that together- pretty much using LOTS of hand signals, drawings and maybe a little frustration here and there.

So obviously our main purpose was to improve their written and spoken english, but I think our teaching proved more beneficial than just that. Two native english speakers coming into a community that really only sees the odd tourist at the supermarket was a pretty big deal. It gave the kids a chance to see two young people, fresh out of school doing something different and pretty cool with their lives. It is the norm for young people in many asian countries to finish high school and start to settle down. So to see us travelling around, doing all of these exciting things gave them the chance to see things from a new perspective.

  LIVING

During my stay my volunteer partner and I lived in a local families home. We lived with 3 gorgeous women who took the very best care of us and made us feel like a part of their family. We also had their family on either side of us, and our representative lived right next door to us, so we had an even bigger extended family. When we first got there, many things were very different, as expected. People slept in the same beds, the tables and chairs were miniature and the lounges were hard. Although in the end these things didn’t make any difference to our stay whatsoever, they were a little unusual to start with and added to my culture shock in the first week.

The people really made a difference to our emotions and how comfortable we felt in someone else’s home though. Our family made adjustments to their own home for the sake of us. Overnight, some of the things that had seemed a little unusual to us had been changed. We went from arriving, potentially having to share a bed, to having two seperate bedrooms, each decked out with everything we would need. We went from having our knees quite comfortably around our ears whilst eating at the stools and mini table in the kitchen to having a full sized set of dining table and chairs, inconveniently too large for the kitchen. We even came back off of holidays to find that our lovely grandma had brought us both brand new quilt covers, because she “wanted us to have something nice to come home too”. These things really did make all the difference to our living experience. The table or the bedspread didn’t mean we went to sleep happier each night, but knowing that I was under the roof of such a loving, beautiful family who did such considerate things for two perfect strangers was an overwhelmingly good feeling.

Our Beautiful Family.

Living with such a wonderful family was such a blessing and that house and those people hold such a special place in my heart now. The times our girls would want to play with us or practice their english is such a beautiful thing to look back on now. Some of my fondest memories of Vietnam are things we did with our family or with our friends we met. I personally think we were actually one of the luckiest pairs of volunteers, due to fact we were living with a family. All of the other Vietnam volunteers lived in different circumstances, such as in the school or university they were teaching at, or in seperate accomodation. We were originally meant to be placed in a totally different town and living arrangements. We were meant to be working in a secondary school and living in a hotel. In our orientation week we were shocked to find out that had changed, but I think it was a blessing we did not realise until later. What may have been us trying to find places to eat or having to cook turned into having home cooked meals every day, twice a day. What may have been coming home to a lonely hotel room every afternoon, searching for something to do turned into us coming home to some of the loveliest people, playing with the kids and discussing our day with our host family. A host family is not usually the norm for living arrangements, but we thought it was one of the best parts of our experience, and totally recommended that it be a part of more volunteers’ experience.

Our wonderful local representative and a member of our host family. Mr Dat was always there to help us out with whatever we needed, like calling us Taxis because we couldn’t speak Vietnamese. We were so lucky to have such a wonderful Rep!

VOLUNTEERING AS AN EXPERIENCE

I think it is a really powerful thing to find enjoyment in your work. After the initial shock phase and the warming period, I really started to enjoy what I was doing. The kids got used to me as a teacher and we fell into routines as we got comfortable with each other. Due to the nature of the content it was extremely easy to teach through games- which both the kids and I really enjoyed. It always made class really fun to prepare for and to go in, as the kids were always happy to see me, mostly because I think we were way less hard on them than the Vietnamese teachers.

The community was such a wonderful thing to be a part of as well. Because we were living in a community that didn’t really get that much tourism, we were pretty recognisable in the town. Most people that I encountered in our city were happy to see us, happy to help us and a lot tried to interact with us, or practice their English. This for me was a wonderful experience and it really showed me the value English has in the world.

Volunteering is singularly the best decision of my life so far, and I mean it. The experience of Volunteering turned out to be so much more than I thought. I met so many wonderful people who taught me so many different valuable life lessons. Seeing people with so much less than me, be so much happier, seeing people so highly prioritise education when they could be worrying about so many different things, it all put life in perspective for me.

  Having enjoyment in work- work that I pretty much paid to do, was such an intensely good feeling. Knowing that you have potentially helped not just one, but several and maybe even lots of individuals lives is such a strange feeling, but a feeling that is fulfilling, satisfying and so pleasing. Whether it was sparking a child’s interest in English, or helping an adult to practise and get back into learning English, whatever we did, I truly think we made an impact.

Would I recommend volunteering?

Yes.

Did I love volunteering?

Yes.

Do I totally want to do it again?

YES!

The knowledge I gained from Volunteering and the impact it made on me as a person is something you can’t just go to the shops and buy. That experience is irreplaceable and will stick with me forever.

Ash

So lucky to have had such an amazing partner as well! 

Below are the link’s to Lattitude’s Website- they run programs to so many different places around the world and each one is different! Unfortunately they aren’t sending volunteers to Vietnam in 2017, but I think it is back on the list for 2018- so go to Vietnam in 2018!

http://www.lattitude.org.au

http://www.lattitude.org.au/where-can-i-go/vietnam

    THE EFFECTS OF VOLUNTEERING "Why do you want to volunteer when you can just earn money or travel anyway?" The amount of times I got asked this question was actually quiet surprising- don't get me wrong the majority of people were fully supportive of my decision to volunteer- but there is, as always, just a few who can't help but stick their nose in where clearly their noses do not belong.