Volunteer camp experience

For one week long I was away from modern civilization of Internet and the like of it. Living away in the countryside for 7 days is enough for me to re-activate myself and to reflect the choices that I have made to serve the community in a village by helping them build up a volleyball court in a school together with another students. The experience was a great one since I got a taste of Thai culture especially villagers with Isaan background. Despite the language barrier of speaking in Thai, I still managed to get across the daily activities without much problem. With the majority of the Thai students, I could say it was OK since most of the are able to speak English and was able to translate when we, the international students, were speaking to the villagers.

We started our journey by train which took us about eight hours. It was a tiring journey since it wasn't comfortable sleeping in the train. It's not like we can lie down but we had to sit all the way! Of course we couldn't get to enjoy the luxury of getting into a better equipped train like most of the people with big pockets of cash. Issues relating to money is the number one reason for every project that is going to happen. So we had to budget ourselves. 

Every morning while we were staying at the school, we would go and visit the villagers and sing songs of praise to them. On the fourth and fifth day we got the enjoy more time to sleep and go visit other village. During the camp, I did know some people from the campus but we not that close to be friends yet. But at the camp, I managed to get to know some people although I still don't know their real names. Most Thai people only tell you their nicknames. Besides, some of the students have the same nicknames so it confuses some of them too. The interesting part for me was to learn Thai language. Everyday during the work, we would call out the materials to make the concrete. We would call hin, saai and nam (I'm not sure if that's what they say or I forgot, LOL). Anyway, that would mean stone, sand and water respectively. 

The experience during the camp taught me many things. Since I used to do volunteer work most of the time, I learn to give more effort and work hard in serving people better. It wasn't easy to do the job but the result was a satisfying one. Looking at the eyes of the people especially the students made me happy. Although some of the days I got bitten by an insect and got my gastric problem back I still am grateful I got to help the villagers. I took close to 3K photos during the camp but only managed to put about 500 photos in my facebook photo albums. I only put the good ones of course. Some of them I will put them here.

Happy Tuesday!