Gavin Final Reflection

I happen to read Jia Xiang's reflection right before this post, and i noticed that he has tons of quotes. And I must admit, that they were quite effective cause these quotes are the only thing that i still can remember now (after 10seconds reading). But I wont be "quoting".

As my final reflection, I think that I will be posting one of my First reflections of the trip, instead of a overall reflection, because i believe nobody else will be doing that.

3rd day, 4.45pm. Thursday. 15/11/2007

What we did:
1. Mushroom chicken instant noodles
2. hygiene lessons (teaching)
3. Asked about the students' lives
4. Played marble
5. Lunch, pasta with rice
6. Firewood 'hunting'
7. Basketball
8. Life journal

As usual, I was awoken by the cheerful enthusiastic voices of the primary school students, especially the pre-schoolers who are just having lessons in the room next to ours. For the first time, the girls woke up earlier. On a side note, I woke up with a bad sore throat.

And as usual, I preferred instant noodles to bread and with lots of saturated fats. Reason? It's really taste. Next i had to teach the students about hygiene, which i believe they were not particularly interested in. Most of them don't have the appropiate facilities and more importantly, it's very difficult to change one's culture and way of life.

For my project, I had to probe and analyze the education system in this particular village. And i found out, surprisingly or not, all of the students enjoyed studying. Most of them aspires to be able to study in a secondary school or equivalent, and thereafter enter university (but according to the principal, only a minority population is privileged enough to be able to). The class i was assigned to teach for the whole duration was a primary six class.

Nextly, I played marble with the students. The students kept giving in to me. And finally, I've won. The kids are so accurate with their shots that I'm very much impressed.

For lunch, we had pasta which group Chengmistry prepared for the whole team. It tasted good, but the noodles that they originally planned to prepare, soured. And was fed to the pigs of a very nice lady who helps us all the time for cooking. I had several conversations with her, and i found out that she finds sending her children to school not too expensive (when it should be, giving her circumstances) which I believe is due to the fact that the villagers fully understand the importance of education. Each semester cost 100-200RMB and there are two semesters a year. This lady rears two pigs where one will be slaughtered once a year (to be eaten by the family through the following year) and the other sold for 1000RMB at the village market.

Firewood-hunting was a horrible but probably inspiring experience. The terrain was very bad. We had to climb up high on a steep and slippery mountain, and there were many flies. I was embarrassed to be more of a trouble than help to the two chinese students along with me, and they kept insisting I stay where I was for my own safety (but of course i din't). What touched me most was that they further insisted on carrying my share of the firewood. The rationale they provided was because they understood that it's my first time in the high mountains and thus it might be dangerous for me with a heavy load to descend the mountain. But it was'nt my first time, I had past experiences in trekking from OBM, rockclimbing and et cetera. The students was also very curious about my country, bombarding me with questions about Singapore. I've also noticed that, despite their poor background, they do not gather expensive plants (which they can recognise), be it plants used for traditional chinese medicine or for display. For example, they found this lan hua, a species of flower which can fetch a price of even 1000RMB. When asked why, they told me big issues such as environmental degradation and the love for environment. Their maturity, despite their young age, surprised me alot.

Gavin Loh