While I was expecting the temperature change being my second trip, the cold wave that greeted my 29 Ngee Ann students as we arrived in Xiamen Airport drew mixed responses.
Such was the start of a two week adventure in embarking on various Water Conservation projects.
For many of the students on this trip, besides a first in encountering cold weather, many of them used tools like trenchers (chunko) and shovels for the first time in their lives.
The day is long starting with morning PT (physical training) at 7:00am where I conduct lots of stretching and warmup exercises so as to minimise muscular or veinious related injuries. Breakfast brings us up to 8:00am where we start digging and trenching up the rocky mountain.
We break for lunch at noon and resume work at 1:00pm to the surprise of many of the locals who usually takes 2 hours lunch breaks (with naps). The place gets dark by 6:30pm and in order to travel down the mountain safely, I decided to stop work and call it a day by 6:00pm.
Dinner is where the moans begin and without fail, I get laments of why they pay to come and suffer (hahahaha !!!)
The students in Shaxian works terribly hard and have lessons up to 9pm every night. We joint them for some of the night classes where we shared with them our lives in Singapore. We even received requests to teach English and other native academic subjects !?
9:00pm is where we have our nightly debrief where we revisit some of the YEP materials and methodologies, we dicussed things like life-journey, understanding reciprocity, conflict management and team formation. With the enthusiastic sharing, it is not uncommon to end the night's session only way pass 11:30pm.
We came, we experienced, we accomplished. This YEP made the difference not only for the beneficiary organisations and community in Xiamen China, but also for the youth contingent that braved personal fears to do something meaningful with their lives. This trip has left an indelible mark in many of the young lives.
Copyright 2009 National Youth Council
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