♥ Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Today, we went to do CIP at Nan Kai Primary School. It was an extremely enriching experience for all of us, and indeed the students there gave us more than we could ever give them, not in material goods but in the lessons that we learnt.
Shu Shien, Wen Yi, Zoe and myself took the Primary One class together. On entering the class, we were warmly welcomed by 72 warm, smiling faces! All the students were looking up at us so eagerly; it made us feel so happy to be there.
We had planned activites for the class the day before, and these inculded printing out a picture of a Christmas Tree for them to colour with the coloured pencils we had bought for them. When our lesson started, we distributed the pictures to them and one coloured pencil each (they were to exchange it with each other) and they excitedly swamped around us, jostling and yelling, "Wo yao! Wo yao! Gei wo!". We were rather overwhelmed at first, but got used to the clamouring after a while.
After about an hour, the students were done with colouring their very own Christmas trees! They were all extremely excited when we told them they could bring it home and give it to their parents, and that they could keep the coloured pencils as well. Seeing the pure joy on their faces made us feel like all the effort we put in and all the jostling we had to go through was well worth it, indeed.
After they had settled down, we started with our second and final activity for that day, which was: teaching them Christmas carols! We started off with "Jingle Bells". It was rather challenging a task, teaching students whom did not know English an English song. We started off by teaching them line by line, i.e. "Dash-ing through the snow", followed by "In a one horse open sleigh". To our pleasant surprise, they caught on after only about 3 tries!
After all 72 of them were able to sing "Jingle Bells" well enough, we moved on to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"! This song was slightly easier to teach, as it was shorter and the pronounciations were a little easier. Again, we taught them phrase by phrase. The sense of achievement we felt after hearing all 72 voices sing on their own cannot be put into words. We were so proud of them!
Singing with them, enjoying ourselves immensely and watching their smiles and eager expressions, time seemed to pass by so quickly. Before we realised it, our lesson time was over and it was time for us to leave. At the end of the lesson, we gave each of them a lollipop. They were so excited; some even tore open the wrapper and started sucking their lollipops straightaway!
After a 5 minute phototaking session with the students, we walked out of the classroom with heavy hearts to meet with the rest of our peers, who had equally engaging and interesting stories of their CIP experiences to share! All 10 of us felt very enriched after the CIP experience, and we were all very glad to have had the opportunity to interact and immerse in the culture and life of these Chinese students.
It was indeed an unforgettable experience.
这是我们五个人的宿舍内！宿舍内有四张床，不是很大，但对我们五个人来说，还好啦。
宿舍内地上有很多双鞋子，因为我们一人带了大概两双鞋子。床底下也堆满了衣服，但我们五个人蛮整齐的，穿好的衣服一定会真理好！
唯一的好处是，我们宿舍内的厕所蛮大的。厕所两个人可以共用，所以我们不必抢用，就不会吵架。
宿舍内也有两个大窗口，当我们早上出去时一定会把它们打开，让新鲜的空气经来，避免传染细菌。这样，我们才不会一同生病。
总而言之，我们十个人对宿舍内的设备有不错的映像。
Zhi Wei
shut up!3:58 AM