Reflection

To start off, I want to begin with my reasons for joining the team. Since young, I was influenced by my dad to be caring about the less fortunate people. Thus, I always enjoyed serving the community in any way that I may be of help to. Moreover, I have longed to participate in school based overseas trips. Stories related to me by friends that had experienced such activities never failed to amaze me. It had soon become a dream of mine, a dream I told myself that I must fulfill. Thus, when I came into TJ and heard about the Overseas Outreach Program, I grabbed on to the chance and went for the interview.
The pre-trip was demanding, we are supposed to come up with several fund-raising events to boost our budget for the trip. We held meetings after meetings that are held late in the afternoon that drains most of our energies away. However, the events are fruitful, not only in terms of funds we raised, but the experience we reaped through the event and more importantly, at least to me, the budding friendships among us. For example, the Sports Carnival brought me a little bit closer to Gavin and the Overnight Movie Screening allowed me to know Hong Yu and the gang of three( Miss Koh, Miss/ Mrs. Fong and Mr. Cheng) better.
Although we had 8 months of meetings together, I am not fully aware of who my trip-mates are, until the sudden rush of activities like ACM trip, “Day-Camps” and Haig Girls event do I really get to know the entire squad. However, till then, we were still more or less strangers to each other. I was beginning to worry that the trip would not bring me the joy that I had heard from seniors and what I have imagined. I was really scared that we will continue to be strangers even when we are in China. Thankfully, I was wrong.
Unlike my other companions, I had a rollercoaster ride for my preparations for the trip. My mom and I had applied for Singapore Citizenship in March, but the application was only granted in November!! And I still have to go through loads of paperwork! I was actually scheduled to have my Singapore passport in December! That was crazy, so I rang up the ministry and “had a good chat” with the person in charge. And he decided to push forward my official “getting” of my passport. BLAH BLAH BLAH. Then I was asked to hand in my confirmation slip together with my particulars 3 days before the departure date and was expected to get my passport on the exact date of departure. And OMG!!!!!! You know what? My mom had forgotten to hand in the confirmation slip on 3 days ago!!!(Now you know where I got my absent mindedness from?) So we pleaded the person in charge to do a double quick procedure for me. And 1 hours later, Woala I got my Singapore passport and another 6 hours later I was at the airport. From this incident, I wonders why a procedure that takes just 1 hour requires 2 weeks to process (which is the time required for normal applications, my 3 days one is already express liao) in Singapore.(raise eye-brown)
The trip itself is a magical one. We took a China Eastern flight to Kun Ming, and that was the worst flight I had ever taken; the air-condition was a total screw-up, so warm that it suffocates and the seats are just too cramp to be comfortable. Somehow I fell asleep, its 2am after all.
Firstly, our time with the students in the schools. The students are wonderful people, and the teachers in most of the schools are really welcoming and warm to us. Indeed, the locals WANT to improve their standards of living. The students do know that the only way out of poverty is perhaps good, proper education. That is why they are very hardworking and studious. When asked what their favourite past time is, the common answer is STUDYING. That is really amazing especially for most of us Singaporean students who find learning a real chore. Yet, their progress in education could be hampered by the lack of infrastructure. That is where foreign aid is really required and there is a severe need in transfer of technology. I also realised that there is still many pressing discrimination in Yunnan. The preference of boys over girls and boy dominance is prevalent there. They see no fault in a boy pushing a girl or taking over her territories for games. Secondly, they also discriminate against left-handers. While this may seem trival on its own, it speak about liberty and equality. Being a left hander, i noticed when i started writing, the students started giggling and laughing at me. Later i realised that they were all forced to use their right hands from young. So you can never find a left hander there. You are considered stupid to be using your left hand. Another distressing issue is their lack of teamwork. The students we work with are very much self-centered. They do not understand the whole concept of teamplay and how it could actually reap greater effectiveness in self-improvement. Our activities with them usually rotated about teamplay. Lastly, it is sad that most of the students were not very courtous. Minding their Ps and Qs was a huge problem. Perhaps one of the greatest impact we left with them is to clear the place of rubbish wherever we went and also to say the simple "thank you"s. Other than that, the students are an adorable buch, fun loving and simple people.Next, the road building project. Well, i guess many felt that we were not helping out much in that anyway. What we did, one worker there could have done perhaps 10x better. However, i've learnt that it is not how much we do there or how well its done that matters, our very presence, our donated sum of money, brings attention of the china government to the village. That is what's important. Sustainability. We want the government to take notice. To step forward and help their own people. Building of that road in xun dian is especially important to the villagers there especially in terms of trading. Before, only horses are able to pass through the roads. Many crops grown in the fertile soils inland are wasted and left to whilt in the cold winter season. A huge economic waste and very much a pity, especially when there is a current shortage of food in the world.
However, no matter how much their individualistic and competitiveness scare me, I must really say I’m respect their drive and determination. No matter how poor their studying conditions are, they strive to give their best in studies – studying in the morning before the teacher come, staying back straight after class to finish their homework and no late coming or any sort when they have to WALK an average time of 1.5 hours to reach their school. Don’t these things make us feel guilty? We have air-conditioned classrooms with brand new tables and chairs; we have qualified teachers and high tech equipments to facilitate our study; we have a good transport system that can take us around S’pore in an hour or so. But yet, we complain, we grumble that school sucks; we moan at the amount of homework that we have; we give excuses and whine at how early we have to get up for school when all it takes is barely 30 mins to reach school. I’m sure many feel the same as I do – that this trip certainly made us feel how lucky and fortunate we are to be here in S’pore. And hopefully, we can use this as a motivation to study harder and put in more effort by doing tutorials and listening in lectures =S
Now that the trip is over and we are all back in S’pore, I believe those 14 days will never be forgotten. I thought it was going to be a very very very long journey on the first day and was wondering how I’m going to survive. But time flies, like we always say, and for some funny reasons, I sort of wish to stay over there where there’s no stress, no worries and away from all realities. Its my life, i lived it and i loved it

-Yu Ang