COR'13: VIETNAM!!
And yes, this is your long awaited COR'13 blog post! I'm sure many of you already knew where we went! Yes, we went to the beautiful city of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
Date: 8 June to 16 June 2013
Place: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
And we were warmly received at the airport by our Vietnamese volunteers from Eco-Vietnam!
Introducing our 4 project groups!
Bomberman! (CGL: Jing Yun, AGL: Jing Wen)
Sonic! (CGL: Ding Zhi, AGL: Nasuha)
Pac Man! (CGL: Sok Hian, AGL: Kelvin)
Last but not least,
Mario! (CGL: Yun Jin, AGL: Yao Jun)
Our days in Vietnam were dedicated to 4 different project sites, namely Teaching, Toilet Building, Road Building and Mural Painting. Of course, there is also the Cooking and Cleaning team who will take care of all our needs!
Teaching
What's an overseas CIP without kids! We went to one of the primary schools in the village to teach the children there basic English and hygiene! Look at how excited they are!
And the learning begins!
We make learning interesting!
Here's a last group shot with the kids!
Toilet Building
We also tried our hands at building toilets for the villagers! Toilet building is definitely something all new to us, but with some help from the villagers, look at the beautiful toilet we built!
Starting the toilet building from scratch!
Putting on the cement on the walls of the toilet!
Almost done!
Can you imagine someone squatting there? :)
Roading Building
One of the CIPs that we did was to build a 1 km road out of gravel for the village! We had to lay the gravel properly and pound the gravel to compact them together to form a path. (:
Mural Painting
We also scrapped off the layer of old paint on a wall in a classroom, and painted a mural design of animals for the school! On top of that, we removed the layer of old paint on the classroom's windows and doors and repainted them as well! The first photo shows how the wall looked like before we started working on it! See the difference that we had made for the school! (:
And the scrapping of old paint begins! It was indeed a tedious chore!
And here's a picture of our very nicely painted mural! :) Credits to Jia Ni for the beautiful design!
Last but not least, we have the cooking and cleaning team! They are a group of elites selected from our 4 groups to help us out with the cooking and cleaning! They are a very important people responsible for filling our stomachs and ensuring we have clean and conducive living conditions! :)
Look at all the delicious food they have prepared for us! Yum yum! :)
R&RThe theme for this year's COR is "Retro-poly"! Besides plainly doing CIP, COR'13 also had a lot of fun doing tasks and earning money to exchange for Chance and Community Chest cards which will determine the winner at the end of COR'13!
Here's a little snippet of what retarded things we have been doing over there in Vietnam!
Night Activities
We played different games during the nights that we were staying in the community hall of the village. Look at how much fun these bonding moments were! (:
Cultural Night Performance
We put up our respective dance and song sign performances as part of the cultural night. The villagers in exchange, performed for us as well. They also set up a campfire and had games for us to play around the campfire!
Before leaving the village, we splited into different groups and went to different houses of the villagers for a house visit. This trip allowed us to learn more about the lifestyle of the villagers.
The opportunity to visit a deaf school in Vietnam was a memorable one. We learnt some Vietnamese sign language and interacted with the local HIs while playing some games with them. After that, there was a performance section in which we performed our cultural dance for them, while they put up a performance for us as well.
And we received gifts of appreciation from them!
And here's a group shot with the deaf community in Vietnam!
Night Market
We had a short shopping trip at the Ben Thanh Night Market. Though it was a short (and wet) one, most of us managed to getting something from there!
One of the most famous and must visit places in Vietnam is the Eco-tourism Park. The volunteers from Eco Vietnam has also kindly planned an amazing race for us at the Eco-tourism Park. We had a great time searching for the stations and completing the various tasks at the stations, while being able to enjoy the scenery of the Eco-tourism Park.
An exciting part to the Vietnam trip was Crocodile Fishing! This was many of our first time seeing real crocodiles, must less feeding them! Look at how close we were to the crocodiles while holding onto rods with fish as baits!
Scary isn't it!
Bat Reserve
We also had the chance to take a boat ride to view bats in the Eco-tourism Park!
Appreciation Night
The last night of our camp was spent together to reminisce about the camp, as well as we had our appreciation. Both comm members and HIs put up a performance respectively. It was a great time seeing all the talents that we have from the performances!
Of course, it was also a night for us to show our appreciation for each other and for the valuable friendships we have forged throughout this 9 days.
We all had great fun during our trip to Vietnam this COR'13! Let us hear what our committee members and our Hearing Impaired volunteers have to say!
"I have learnt much from everyone in COR'13, be it the committee members for the HIs. I have also learnt that diversity is one true thing that we all have in common and that we should embrace and understand it to work together in different situations. All in all, I have enjoyed my 9 days spent in Vietnam with COR'13! :)" - Jia Ni, Publicity and Publications
"A word to describe the Vietnam trip: AMAZING! The precious friendships forged, the helping hands not just to the Vietnamese but also to one another were just wow! Instead of always hearing from others how fortunate we are, I experienced myself and yes, we are indeed a million times more fortunate than many. If I were asked if I ever regret going, I am pretty sure my answer will always be NEVER!" - Hui Xian, Business Manager
"My first time being in COR'13 Vietnam was so meaningful and fulfilling for myself. Looking forward only to Community Involvement Project, I finally felt satisfied by the works executed diligently by me and my very own team, Bomberman. We all had a fun-filled and tedious journey while fostering a bond among us. Though breaking sound barriers, sign language as a form of communication brought us closer together despite all the difficulties initially.
Most importantly, I learnt all the names of COR'13 committee and shared fun with everyone, both the committee nd deaf participants and lastly, the Vietnamese children." - Johnson, Hearing Impaired Participant
"Camp OutReach 2013 was absolutely perfect. I cannot put into words how grateful I am to COR'13 for giving me this amazing opportunity. I was so happy to get hands-on experience of community service in rural places in Vietnam. It was beyond my expectations and I loved it. Being able to do community service in Vietnam gave me the opportunity to see and experience how different their culture is. Seeing the kids full of energy despite the poor living conditions has made me more thankful for what I have and how blessed I am.
It was a great experience doing community project with the committee members. We kept doing crazy things such as inserting tissue papers into our noses for a few minutes, brushing our teeth together, tickling each others' smelly feet and playing games during night activities. It was so much fun! It was a delight to see a mixture of hearing participants and committee members interacting and enjoying each others' company.
Not forgetting the local staffs, who were amazing and friendly. Thanks to them, the accommodation could not have been any better! From the beginning to the end of my trip, I did not have any negative experience with the program." - Ellias, Hearing Impaired Participant
"COR’13 is the first service learning OCIP-cum-adventure OutReach Camp which is very enriching and meaningful experience for me in an unfamiliar rural village in Vietnam. For the first past 6 days, the 4 groups participated in 4 different projects for CIP and took turns, making good progress at the end of each day. The 4 CIP projects included road building, toilet building, mural painting and teaching.
Road building was my first hands-on experience where I had to use the chopped wooden logs to flatten the road along with small pebbles with my limited power! Thanks to the merciless scorching sun, I sweat a lot! There was no advanced technology in this less developed country! However, with the help from the other groups, the project was nicely completed!
As for toilet building, it was a much easier task building the toilet in one of the nicely aligned houses in the village! It was also a first time hands-on experience for me. I learnt to make cement and cemented the bricks while stacking the bricks on top of one another. I guess back in 1970s, Singapore also used this method of making cement on the floor without the help of the machine to build houses.
On the last day of COR, we witnessed the fierce dark clouds forming above Vietnam, with bolts of lightning. The sea waves were also treacherous as we rode in a ship vessel from one sea port to another. The raindrops were like needles poking on our faces and bodies together with the huge gust of wind! When we reached the port, I accidentally slipped halfway down the staircase and hit my butt against the remaining steps! I didn’t utter anything and quickly left the ship vessel!
Overall, there were many things that happened to me during my third unprecedented COR trip in 2013! For example, my nose suddenly bled, my face was swollen on my birthday and I even slipped down the staircase during the rainstorm! Nevertheless, I would like to thank COR’13 committee from the bottom of my heart for this wonderful trip!" - Jack, Hearing Impaired Participant
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