Uni-Y@NUS International Service Programmes presents : Cambodia ISP!

APPLICATION NOW OPEN!!!



Do you have the passion to serve the less privileged people overseas?

Or a loving heart to lend a helping hand to the poor and needy orphans?

We will give you an opportunity to do so! THE choice is YOURS!

From 14^th May till 27^th May, we will be conducting an ISP trip to Cambodia!

Our main focus is education and infrastructure for under-privilege children at Unaccompanied Children Association Centre. They are either orphans, abused children or children from single-parent families.

Our main activities include conducting basic English lessons as well as contributing towards the infrastructural improvements at the centre. There may also be other community-based service programmes such as the nourishing of underprivileged children and interaction with children who live at dumpsites.

Exposure to the huge dumpsite in Phnom Penh and the interaction with the villagers would definitely open the eyes of volunteers to the level of poverty experienced in Cambodia.

You will live to love your decision in joining us!

So come join us! Send your application to cambodiayep@gmail.com or should you have any query, please email to the above email too! :)

P/S:
The application should include:
1) Name and Matriculation Number
2) Year of Birth
3) Contact Number
4) Email
5) Course of Study
6) Year of Study­
7) Core CCAs in University/Jc/Poly
8) Any Overseas/Local CIP experience
9) Committee you prefer (publicity, sponsorship and English education programmes)
10) Reason for Joining (Less than 100words)

Hurry and apply as there're limited places!

Yummy Handmade V-Day Chocolates for SALE!!!

Sweets for your Sweetie!!! <3>

Are you still mulling over what Valentine's Day gift to buy for your significant other? Our unique handmade chocolates make an excellent choice of heartfelt present for that special one! It doesn't have to be for your boyfriend/girlfriend, you could give these chocolates to your friends as a special gift for this special occasion to show them how much you treasure their friendship! =)

Gerard and his SE team have painstakingly learnt to make these delicious and oh-so-pretty chocolates from a certified and experienced baker and then put in their greatest time and effort into making each and every one of these chocolates by hand! What could be a more heartfelt and sincere gift for your loved ones than that? =)

Each beautifully wrapped box contains 6 pieces of chocolates and each box costs just $8! Hurry and order from us now! We only have limited number of boxes for sale! =)

To order, just email Gerard at dunwana_be_alone@hotmail.com

Vietnam YEP - Project Sparkle! Part IV

Happy Chinese New Year!!! I hope all of you had a great new year and enjoyed your visitations and collected lots of ang pows! Personally, I had an awesome time stuffing myself with new year goodies, and yummy dishes cooked by my dad for our reunion dinner. =P

Sadly, now that the CNY holidays are over, it's back to the usual stress and dumdrums of school life! Aye...but fret not...here's my next episode of my Vietnam posts to help you guys bring back some wonderful memories =)

This episode will be about the fun things we did! One of my most memorable experience is the home visit to one volunteer's place. My group consisting of Chee Hong, Shawn, Jieying, Wanling and Lynn went to Phi's house. We took 2 buses and walked quite abit to get to her place. It was super interesting coz it was the first time I took the bus in Vietnam, and it feels abit like 'Crazy Taxi' (in this case, it's 'Crazy Bus') coz the bus just 'chiong' off once the people get on the bus and it doesn't even stop properly for people to get off. As in, the bus will still be moving while people are alighting the bus. So it was pretty scary for me lols.

It was also interesting how the bus driver decorated his seat area like his personal office, with pictures of his children pasted on the wall and his cute ornaments. You definitely won't see that in Singapore, although I have seen some taxi drivers place many Buddha pictures and beads and stuffs in their taxi.

And unlike in Singapore. there's a bus conductor who's in charge of selling the bus tickets to passengers on the bus. Phee helped to pay for our bus fares. =)

This is us at Phi's house! Plus her pretty little cousin =)

Relaxing at Phi house...

One of our missions for that day was peeling the pomelos lol. It wasn't easy at all! It took like 6 of us to cut and peel 1 pomelo and the result was a jumbled mess of pomelo fragments. Phi did a better job at the pomelo than the lot of us combined lol! The pomelo was sweet and delicious!

We also visited the rooftop of Phi's house, where there're alot of potted plants. There were orchids, starfruit plants, chili plants, and one plant which produced a particular fruit (i forgot what) which fascinated Wanling quite abit lol.

So cute!

Hanging around at the living room...

What are they doing?!!!

Our 2nd mission was to go shopping! Lols! We took a bus to a nearby shopping centre and spent some time shopping for coffee at the supermarket. I bought quite alot to bring back to Sg to give to my friends and relatives.

Outside the shopping centre, at the Christmas decorations area.

This is our super delicious dinner! Pancakes!!! They're soooooo yummy! I totally miss this dish. How to eat :

Step 1 : take a big piece of veggie

Step 2 : place a pancake on the veggie

Step 3 : roll it up

Step 4 : dip in the yummy special sauce

Step 5 : Chow it down!

I ate about 4 of it. The pancake is exactly like fried egg size. Initially I thought they cooked a ton of fried eggs for us lol.

Another memorable thing is Shuhan's birthday! We had a little surprise for her. I remember that night at near midnight, I think Shuhan was 'baited' into Gilbert's room (er..this sounds wrong, no? heehee) and then some of us charged into the room and surprised her with a birthday cake.

The Birthday girl!

Another birthday surprise for her at the hotel lobby. I think we surprised her a few times lol.

Alright that's is for today. Look out for next episode! =D Study hard, everyone!

Vietnam YEP – Project Sparkle! Part III

Hi everyone! I'm back for Part III! Been waiting long? =P I've been really busy the past week planning and appealing for my modules, that's why. FYI, I'm still short of 1 module and I'm waiting for my appeal results which will be out next wednesday. Pray it'll be approved! Oh yes, it's time for tutorial balloting as well. Hope all of you will get your desired timeslots so won't have to go through the hassle of appealing! And of course, some of you lucky ones from biz or engin probably got your tutorial classes preallocated already. =) Ok I'll cut the crap and get down to blogging about the YEP trip!

This 'episode' will be about our teaching sessions at YMCA and the HOPE. The people we taught were youths ranging from those in their late teens to those in their 30s as well as some older members. Their level of English literacy varies too, so it wasn't easy trying cater our lessons to all of them within a classroom. Nonetheless, I felt that it was a fun experience, and I hope that they had learnt much from us over the few days that we had classes with them.

It's kinda heartening to see their enthusiasm for picking up the English language, when most of us in Singapore just take for granted our opportunity to learn this language in school from a young age. Just like us, they have high aspirations and dreams. Their thirst for knowledge and determination to work towards their goals despite their more difficult circumstances put some of us from the more prosperous countries to shame.

One guy I spoke to (the marketing manager) said that he wish to learn English so that he can converse well with people from many different countries, and he also wishes to learn other languages such as Chinese language. He also spoke of his aspirations to travel overseas to work and to make friends from other countries. I guess seeing other people from other countries especially those who are less well-off and enjoy less good opportunities than us can make us reflective of ourselves and to appreciate better what we have. It's time to make some really good new year resolutions that will demonstrate what we have learnt from this trip! =)

Anyway, just a reminiscence of what we did at the schools...We were divided into 2 groups. 1 to teach at YMCA and the other to teach at HOPE. I can still remember the routine everyday over the 2 weeks - breakfast till 8am, take the bus and drop off the first group at YMCA, then travel to HOPE to drop off the next group. And after the classes, pick up the first group at YMCA, then travel to the primary school for lunch and then painting plus teaching till about 5pm, then travel to YMCA for dinner, then back to hotel at 8 plus...Such wonderful times we had! =D

Enjoy!

A welcome speech from the principal at HOPE.

These girls working at YMCA are all pretty young and their English proficiency is quite low.

FriendshipHope 2
Listening attentively in class
We taught them various things such as common English conversations, useful vocabs, grammar and some pop songs (I believe I can fly, anyone?)

The Hope 1 class, the class I was in =)

A farewell and thank-you speech by the marketing manager. He also gave us his self-made gift of music cds with 7 tracks of classic Vietnamese songs and his voice recording on the first track. The CD was also printed professionally.
Playing some party games (English word game!)I'll always remember this day...the farewell party organized for us by our Hope 1 class *sobs*
Some pics we took together for the last time
Hope 1 + Hope 2 on our last day of teaching
"My name is...."
Teaching the girls at YMCA
Wanna challenge us?
Bring it on!
ready...1..2..3..GO!!!
Spicing up the lesson with games!
The banana song?
Macarena?
Happy Together!

Alright, that's it for today. Have a great weekend! =D

Vietnam YEP – Project Sparkle! Part II

Hello! I'm back to post Part II! =) The main things we did in the YEP trip were painting and teaching the kids at the primary school. It was truly a memorable and fun experience for me. It was the first time in my life using paintbrushes and the paint roller thingy and I guess it's probably the same for the others as well. Certainly, we were not as adept at the 2 professional workers hired to do the jobs, but we all had definitely put in our best effort in painting and scraping and stains-removing! =)

It was pretty tough work! My favourite task was actually painting the windows and doors coz I would feel a greater sense of accomplishment when I see the windows and doors turning from rusty grey to completely blue as I paint and paint, compared to whitewashing the walls where there appeared to be only slight visible changes as we were painting coz the walls were already relatively white (thanks to the workers ;) ). However, the smell of the blue paint was super strong and pungent. I was torn between whether to wear my mask to protect my nose or to go without it to get some oxygen.

I was most afraid of getting the paintbrushes and paint rollers dirty by the dust and dirt on the walls coz the dirt would be spread on the walls by the brushes and it would be difficult to get rid of the dark patches after that. We had to go over the dark patches with white paint several times. It was worse when the blue paint got onto the white walls coz it was even more difficult to cover. Lucky we had Gilbert to help remove the stains with the tinner =) Tho the tinner caused some mishap to one of our teammates (but fortunately no permanent harm done. whew!)

Due to my height I was a shoo-in for the task of painting the top parts of the walls. It was quite tiring and it kinda made me vertiginous coz I had to climb up and down the bench repeatedly to refill the paint and then paint the walls. I also learnt that if I pressed the rollers too hard against the wall or if I rolled the rollers too fast I'll get 'white rain' all over myself and others who happened to be painting next to me. =P

Over the duration of the trip I encountered about 5 lizards. It was horrible. I encountered 1 at the hotel restaurant (it was later murdered by Han Sheng, if I rmb correctly =P) The other lizards were encountered at the school while painting. I was so afraid that a lizard would suddenly jump out and land on me while I was painting the upper parts of the walls. I would most probably just freak out and fall backwards without caring what's behind me. So thankfully, that did not happen. The lizards were very fat. I saw a lizard which was so black and so fat it was disgusting. >_< Ok enough about lizards.

Below are some pictures of us painting. Over the 2 weeks we managed to finish about 5 classrooms I think.

The classrooms we had worked on

The kids came to greet us outside the school =)

Karen and Gilbert concentrating on their tasks =)

Child labour =P (The little boy volunteered to help us paint lol)

4 painters to a window – rushing to finish…once start, cannot stop lol (painting the windows' kinda addictive haha)

Shawn's makeshift protective gear coz he lost his cap

Taking a break!
Looking shag

Time-saving method of painting--- Do not learn =P

Our ad models for Uni-Y Construction Company Pte Ltd =P

Whitewashing the walls

难兄难弟
The sink where A Feng lives (this shot seems to have a creepy effect, no?)

Those who were not painting were allocated to teach the kids for that day. Teaching was very fun! The kids are so so so adorable! =D My first teaching partner was Shawn and Phat was our translator. I think Phat is amazing. He has a talent for dealing with young children. He was firm yet gentle with the kids and I can see all the kids love him! He could get the kids to quiet down and listen to him (although not for long coz they'd soon forget about all that he had said to them and start their clamor once more lol) His voice is like very powerful also. He could maintain his loud volume throughout the days of teaching =O Hmm I remember in my first class, we taught the kids the names of animals and we sang children's songs and played 'pass the bottle'. And after the break, they totally went out of control. We taught them some English phrases to write in the postcards (which we had sold for the fundraising) to bring back to Singapore. The kids started walking around the classroom and it was difficult to keep them quiet. In other words, it was pretty chaotic lol. But they were so adorable that I couldn't bring myself to feel any sense of annoyance. The kids love taking pictures! Whenever I brandished my camera phone they flocked to me and jostled crazily to be in the picture.

(L to R) Han Sheng, Quynh, Phi and Phat

The other building of the primary school which was about 10 minutes walk away from the main school building

A seemingly peaceful class

Teacher Han Sheng!

Er..it's getting a little chaotic

The kids are totally camera-UNshy. That feet in the air…haha

One of my classes =)

And they love taking pics =)

Xi Hui and her child labor boy lol

Benjamin and his kid haha

Jieying and hiphop kid

She's one my fave girls. She's super cute! =)

Sok Ee and the cutie
A kid showing us his breakdance moves
Guess who's over there?

My partner for the next 2 classes was Wan Ling. She had lost much of her voice after all the shouting in the classes. I think I was one of the few who managed to not fall sick throughout the trip. Many actually lost their voices after their first class of teaching. I miss the kids! They are so adorable, so innocent, and so pleasant and welcoming towards us! I even received gifts from some of the kids. I got a hand-written Christmas card, a crayon pen. an eraser, and a little toy figurine. =) I think the most interesting thing was when the kids ran to all of us for our signatures. I felt like a celeb lol. Some of the kids came to me repeatedly for signatures even though I had signed for them already but I guess they just wanna fill up their slips of paper with signatures.

Wanling, my teaching partner =D

And that's me ;)
the autograph session lols

The left girl is Tram, Wanling's and my fave girl :)

Alright part III shall be up real soon…after I settle my CORS bidding! Wish me luck in getting my desired modules!