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Saturday, January 10, 2009

8:09 PM


Wow, I can’t imagine that we have already gone through the whole thing. Done a lot of preparations, made a lot of friends and yes of course, gained a great unique experience. Sorry for taking such a long time to reflect on my trip. This service learning made me more matured and also stronger to brave those challenges in life. But still, learning will never come to an end. I will still try to ‘upgrade’ my mentality in life. Or perhaps there’s no such thing as ‘upgrade’ but to discover different perspectives and to believe in them.

Oh yeah, Yunnan…I first came to the program with that ‘superhero’ mentality. Yunnan I have come to help you all and ease your burdens away, then felt so honored after coming back –that sort of thing. But I guess that’s what we will feel if you try to help others without much thinking or understanding those we are helping.

Then bit-by-bit, this ego starts to drop off. Thanks to my teachers who tried their best to deliver the message to us. Actually, at first I thought why do we need such a long time to prepare? Just go there and help! We are wasting time. The end product is still the same anyway. Then, I realized that the focus was not only about helping them, it’s also about us. What are we going to learn from them after all the work is done? That’s something I’ve never given a thought! All I know or accustomed to is that we help others as much as we can and at the end, we feel spiritually happy and light. But well, that feeling tends to make me feel kind of proud.

Okay, the trip. My mood varied during the trip. I felt happy, nervous, sad, curious, angry and also guilty. My first day has already shocked me. Those parade of children welcoming us with their percussions and claps, made us look like some bunch of ministers visiting them. Felt happy and also guilty, we are only building a road! But we ended up not building it at all. Simply because they have actually done it before we reached Yunnan. Then, our poor teachers had to keep on asking the teachers in Tu Chiao of what can we do to help. Lesson learnt: be flexible when things go unexpectedly different. A family offered their hospitality and we stayed in their double-storey house. It was a pretty rich family indeed. Stereo system, electric and gas cooker and a well near us, it was just too comfortable for our service-learning. Tian Chiao was one of the two siblings in the family. We learnt a lot from him. I felt that that they offered too much for us that we are actually burdening them instead of helping. Like, they made the area around the well safe for us, always make those charcoal fire, offered free ingredients and many other things. I felt guilty because we couldn’t repay this deed. Even if we want to, they won’t accept it.

I love the kids. They had this attitude for studying that can easily make our Singaporean students ashamed. They love to study and always do it. Anyway, I’m pretty surprised that their Primary 5 students are learning algebra when we have it during Secondary 1. So, I’m humbled by their caliber and felt that we are the ones who are backwards. What an irony that we come from a much more developed country but are actually less smart. We should really drop our ego and not judge them negatively by their old, rural school. We should look into others strengths instead of focusing on their weaknesses. I believe that this should be an attitude to have to be a better person. I was emotionless when we were leaving Tu Chiao for another school while these beautiful beings cried and tried to follow us. I mean, well people enter and go off in our lives. We will meet thousands of people later down the road. I do care very much for them and feel sad that we might not meet again but we’ve got to be strong, it’s part and parcel of life isn’t it?

Next stop, we went another primary school that was quite fitted with great facilities . My god, we had a bed provided each in our shared rooms. Bad feelings started to come. What’s this?! No! I want my dusty room back. Also, I want to sleep on my sleeping bag. I’m much more comfortable with those conditions at Tu Chiao. All these came to my mind. I was so shocked that they wanted us to build some parts of the playground. They don’t NEED a playground, they WANT it, I kept thinking of this. I was quite angry about it. But after the guidance from Ms Azyanti, I could accept it. I was spoilt with those experiences and worse conditions in Tu Chiao and was so accustomed to them that I developed this ego. That’s why I couldn’t accept those comfort provided. It was quite a hard work on the playground. But I felt happy when they were done. We left for the hotel after 2 days at the school.

When we came back, I just couldn’t say much things, I just want to go home and rest.
I thought about that trip for days, reflecting on my actions and what happened. I realized that what I thought that I’ve learnt were not really new, things that we already know like to be flexible in times of changes, not to judge people by their cover and to look into people’s strength instead of their weaknesses. However, it was the experience that made us a different person. We can easily say these things to other people but we might not really understand them or to ‘feel’ its importance in our lives. It is this trip that gave me that experience. I would like to thank my teachers for guiding me through all this and my L.E.G.O pals who went through those sweet and hard times together during the trip and also before the trip even though you all were feeling distressed at some moments. Love you all!

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