The Experience of a Person Traveling to Thailand as a Volunteer
Volunteering in Thailand
I first learned about volunteering during my fourth year of university by following a blogger on Weibo who traveled to Bali for volunteering alone. At that time, I was thinking about when I could take a trip alone, but because I was busy preparing for the entrance exam, I put the matter aside. Until I finished my postgraduate studies and was just about to start classes, I booked the winter tickets and itinerary to Thailand for volunteering.
The experiences and insights I gained from this volunteering trip are:It is not as comfortable and enjoyable as a simple trip, nor as difficult as a simple volunteer service. It is a combination of volunteering activities and travel culture experiences. More importantly, it allows you to contact local people, local culture, and meet a group of like-minded companions.
I chose the teaching volunteering project in Bangkok based on the destination I wanted to go to. There are several types of volunteer projects, including school teaching and community service, as well as environmental protection. Since I am a translation major, I chose English teaching under school teaching, teaching English to local primary school students.
As soon as I entered the campus, the children greeted us warmly saying 'Hello'
Local Thai children's English foundation is still pretty good, perhaps because it is a tourism country, they learn Thai and English from a young age. Now that more and more Chinese tourists come to Thailand, they also start learning Chinese.
The first day of class was teaching basic vocabulary to first graders, and the classroom had a microphone. After my partner and I taught the basic vocabulary, we started teaching English songs to lighten the atmosphere and teach a number song in English. After we finished, we asked if anyone wanted to come up and sing. Almost every child raised their hand, probably because they were used to the microphone being used by the teacher and wanted to try it out haha. At first, they would come up one by one to sing with a microphone, but later they were too enthusiastic, so they had to use a few microphones to arrange the performance.
The next two days were the school's summer camp activities. Our group was responsible for the 'Adventure' project. Other activity projects included music, dancing, and graphics. When the draw came up, I, a 'nine-tailed fox' (a self-deprecating joke), got the only outdoor project, and I really stood on the playground for two days without air conditioning or fans TAT.
The children showed us the cards they found.
The task for two days was to teach directional words and sentence patterns, and then hide the puzzle cards in all corners of the school for the children to find. From first grade to sixth grade, this is the content of the lesson (emmm, I think this course setting is a bit problematic), the older students don't have much interest in 'treasure hunting' because they must have experienced it from first grade to sixth grade every year.
Children enthusiastically ran to hug us.
Finally, on the last day, we taught Chinese. When we left, two little girls rushed over and used Google Translate to ask us if we would come back. We shook our heads and said 'No', and they continued to type 'Do you have Facebook?' We were also helpless and shook our heads and said no, we can't use Facebook in our country. Finally, we hugged them and left the school gate. During the lesson, the local teacher who partnered with me didn't understand why we couldn't use Facebook, which would lose a lot of information. I thought for a long time and couldn't think of a good answer, so I could only say that it was because of government control. Thai people have many curiosity and misunderstanding about China.
Chinese class.
During the volunteering period, the volunteers lived together. There was a car to pick us up every day. I was with a beautiful Yunnan sister who was in her second year of university. Most volunteers are students in their second and third years, the youngest is a couple who were reading high school in France. When I chatted with them, I realized that although they were young, they had already made a clear plan for their future and participated in volunteering mainly to obtain this certificate for future college applications. I couldn't help but sigh, I was still a 'fish' when I was in my second year.
With my beautiful roommate~.
Although the few days of stay are short, the contact with the children made me feel like I had returned to that innocent and naive age.
I can't possibly change their life,
but they did change mine.
Class snapshots
