Student comments 2015#
Although students had found it tough adapting to the living conditions, the experience of meeting new people and making new friends made the trip a great success. Here are some comments by students at the end of the trip.
From interacting with the children, seeing how happy they were despite their circumstances, each individual had a distinct personality, despite living in poverty these levels are still able to remain positive and maintaining a positive outlook on life. I admire how these children are so real and care-free with each other, giving up on the materialistic joys of life. I especially enjoyed listening to the personal stories of students and stroked me that it was important that I helped them to achieve their dreams, feeling guilty about how I take so much for granted. Baiwan honestly humbled me and was a wake up call for me to start being globally aware of those in need.
We made a lot of friends in the secondary school, they liked us and our classes. At the end, we traded QQ accounts and emails. We also had a few primary school kids with us quite a lot, and they were sad to see us go. The week ended very quickly, and we were so upset to leave the place. I feel that we’ve made a huge impact on their lives. We are still currently keeping in contact with a few of them. I hope I can visit soon. I never thought I would say this, but I love Baiwan and I really want to go back.
On the first day of the trip, I could hardly adapt to the life in boarding school of Qingyuan. Since I had to sleep on hard bunk beds without foam, use squat toilets without flushing and shower with a tap. I really wanted to go home that night. I thought that I could not get through the week. As I arrive at Baiwan and started teaching, I started to like the place. I had a lot of fun teaching the students and am very delighted to know them. I miss them very much when I had to leave Baiwan. Although I got their contact number, there is a high chance that we would not be able to text each other, nor would we meet each other. Whenever I realize that it’s a lifelong goodbye, I get very upset.
The kids are always going to lie in my head forever along with this trip. Most of them really want to learn but don’t have the money to learn. We can all see that the kids there are all very happy and have great capacity to learn.
The thing that pulled me towards the children was their liveliness and innocence. .. There were extremely tough times when cooperation in the class was not present, or when there was tension between me and the students either because they did not understand or they were just straight up being difficult. In the end we always found a way to work around our problems and make the children understand.