On the 5th August- 15th August 2016, I had joined a summer workcamp held in Vinh Long, Vietnam In which my job is to teach the elementary school students in the rural area of Vinh Long about English.
I arrived at Ho Chi Minh the very first day and get to know other participants from different country such as Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Spain and Indonesia. We had an introduction and ice breaking session in order to know each other better. The next day we depart to Vinh Long in a van and the journey took approximately 3 and half hours. We were welcomed by the host family when we arrived there and we had a really great dinner with the family.
The next day, we started to discuss and plan about the activities that we are going to have in the school on the next day. Our focus is to let the children learn some basic English in an interesting way, so we decided to conduct some game in which the children will gain some knowledge in English throughout the games. Besides, we divided ourselves into 3 groups in order to handle different group of children of total amount approximately 60 students. We had a great time with the students and they gave us 100% cooperation as well.

For the second day, it was a sport day in which all students are asked to divide into 3 groups as usual and we as the committee will handle and conduct the sports. For sport day, our main objective is to let them know about teamwork besides teaching them some new English vocabularies throughout the sports/games.

We enjoyed ourselves very much in the school even though communication is the main problem as students’ English level is nearly zero and we had to use body languages most of the time or seek for help from the local participants for translation. We can see that the students had a lot of fun and enjoyed very much.
Throughout the workcamp, we were assigned to plan and prepare our daily meal (lunch and dinner) based on a rotation basis according to our own group. It was really fun and interesting preparing meals with other participants as we were mixed up in a group, which means we have different nationality in the group and we always got to try some international cuisine such as Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Korean and even Vietnamese food for our meals throughout the workcamp.

During the free time, we will sit down together and chitchat about our own stories from our homeland, share our very own experiences in school, in life, and sometimes play some games in order to strengthen our bonding in this camp. Besides, we played a game called “ secret buddy” in which we will have to take care of someone without letting them know and this had further strengthen our relationship.  At the night, we will review back what we had done for the whole day , and try to figure out the solutions for any problems we were facing, to make the next day better.