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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Reflection on the internal workshop
7:30 PM


Today, we have attended a very useful and beneficial internal workshop conducted by Ms Kohn. This pre-trip activity aims to help us realize more about ourselves and what we want to learn there.

Firstly, we were asked to bring one item that can represent ourselves and put them on the table. Then we walked around and saw what others had chosen and wrote comments for them. After taking back our items, we were supposed to answer the questions post by others and stated the reason why we thought it represented us. From this activity, we have come to have a better idea of ourselves as well as our team members. In the process of thinking why the item represented us, we were analyzing ourselves. Hence, after the activity, I did find I have achieved a better understanding of how I qualify myself. Moreover, after listening to our team member’s speech, we came to know more about them and how they viewed themselves.

Next, we were asked to list down the questions that we have for the people there. In this way, we would have a learning objective beforehand and knew clearly what we were going to achieve once we reached there. This maximized what we could learn from the trip. Another significant thing I have learnt from here was that, no matter what time and what task we were attempting, we should always open up to our team members and say whatever we wanted to say. This was because at the beginning of the activity, I was very quite and not saying anything at all. I thought all the questions they have asked looked like known to me already. However, then the teacher told me that I should speak up even though I might think I do not have many questions. She said I would definitely have questions and they must be from a different perspective from my team members. No matter the questions were worthy or not, I should state whatever I was thinking and this could help to inspire my team members as well. Hence, for the next few activities, I learnt to talk whatever I felt like to and I found indeed, other people could get inspiration and better ideas based on what I have provided. And I felt this was a great improvement in myself.

Then, in the afternoon, we have learnt the difference between service learning and ocip. We all agreed that our trip to yunnan is a service learning trip. Hence, we have once again clearly identified our goals of the trip, which was to serve and learn at the same time. Just like what the sentence has said: “We are serving you because we want to learn from you.” However, we had a debate on whether should the learning be more significant than the service or they both had a large and equal significance. The teachers were more pro towards thinking the learning was more significant than service. However, I kept my stand on thinking that both of them should have equal importance. The main reason was because the strong motivation that has drawn me to this program was to serve and learning at the same time instead of learning comes first. I mean, we have many opportunities to learn in life. Then why did you choose this project to learn? Because I wanted to serve also! Despite this, I might have a different idea after the trip. But who knows? We shall see…

Lastly, we had a session to decide on what the topic of the photo essay should be. I thought this was the most interesting session of the day. I really enjoyed the idea of shooting photos according to a theme and write a story plot based on that. And I am looking forward to tomorrows’ trial run on this activity.


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