This summer, I went to Thailand for volunteer work. I think I had a fantastic experience in Singburi, a very undeveloped city in Thailand. And I had spent two weeks in here, so I did two different programs. I had learned a lot in these two weeks.
During the first week, I participated in the clay house program. This is the most challenging program, we had to climb up to the roof top of each house to put cement of the roof to strengthen the structure of the house because it has been raining last week. Also, the conditions of the clay house was very extreme, there were lots of mosquitoes, insects and animals such as lizard, centipede and snake. The difficult part of maintaining the house was we did it without any protection; no safety helmet and no safety rope, so we had to be extra careful because the roof was very slippery and due to the local humid weather. We worked from 9-12 and then 1-3 this is the most sultry time and I sweated all the time, sometimes I felt dizzy on the roof so I had to go down to hydrate myself and then went up to work again. That’s why this became very time consuming and we only have 3 people including the coordinator. When it came the edge of the roof, this is most dangerous part I climbed to the top of the ladder, which was not reliable because it was rusty. And another person had to stand at the roof he had to gave me the cement so that I could put the cement on the edge. We able to finish the work within a week. We had to created our own cement. First of all, you had to prepare a large bucket, sand, water, and cement. Next, you filled up 1/3 of the bucket with sand. After that, you needed to put some cement into the bucket and mixed it up with the sand. Then, you needed some water just cover the sand and the cement. Finally, you mixed them together.
For the Second week, I switched to another program to help in other ways. I thought I can use English knowledge to help some underprivileged students. In a local school, there are around hundreds students, but there was one English teacher, so you can imagine the education standards and facilities of the school isn’t very good. We taught around 5 lessons and stood approximately 5 hours per day, it was more exhausting than I was expecting. I thought this would be easier than clay house program but it proved that I was wrong. We did lots of preparation before every single class because communication is one of the problems, but luckily our coordinator is with us she can translate for us. After a week, we basically met every single student; they are lovely and smart. We thought them colours, sports, and weather including to read, to write and to recognise. In addition, I found those students like singing and dancing and they did it in every single class they seem very happy and confident. On the other hand, there are few students are experiencing dyslexia they absolutely don’t understand everything that we said so we had to spent extra time to teach them and it seems the school doesn’t give any additional support for those students. And I realised sometimes explain something to someone is harder than what I had understand. At the end of the program, I bought some sweet and chips to the student I had met in this week. The English teacher told us we have been the best teaching group over a years.
Furthermore, at the evening all the volunteers sitting outside the accommodation and we socialised together. I met different people from around the world for instance, American, Italian, Dutch, and German. Most of them are older than me, they shared they own experience to me. And I love to making new friends and socialises with people.
Moreover, during this two weeks time, I think I had make the most of it and I felt really rewarding. Being a worker helped the local community to built a house for those people who can’t afford a house. Being a teacher teach those brilliant students and spent some time playing games with them. I enjoyed the time that I had spent in here. Compare to their life, I think my life is much more better so I had to appreciate what I been given now.
The outcome is we should taking care of someone who can’t help themselves. If we have the ability to help we should do it. In China as a communism country, people just caring making more and more money, therefore we put less attention to who really need us to help them. In the future, I hope I can contribute to my country as much as I can to someone who needs my help.