It has been an incredible year, 2014. The past 355 days (since there is still a month more to go before 2014 officially ends) have made me grown so much in terms of serving people, serving God and self-realization.
Beginning with the 1st of January, at 9 am, brother drove me to the Pearson International Airport to fly to Taipei. New Year Day is an ideal day to travel: no morning-rush-hour traffic. But it is going to be a long flight of 15 hours and 25 minutes (to be exact) to Shanghai. After 4 hours and 10 minutes of lay-over in Shanghai, there is another hour and 55 minutes before reaching Taipei. With that in mind, I was determine not to sleep on New Year's Eve; getting ready to walk into a new year, like a child, not knowing what lies ahead but certainly looking forward to living on another side of the globe.
I can barely believe it's December now. December is the season of thanksgiving, the month when Christ was born to reconcile us to God, the season of giving and baking cakes and goodies. While everybody is busy preparing for their finals at this time, I feel grateful to have no exams but more importantly, grateful that I have this co-op job, aka internship if you're not in the land of maple leaves. Highlighting significant experiences from the last 11 months:
The Cambodian Experience
If you happen to be at Changi Airport around 5am on May 22, 2017, you might have seen a group of 21 excited folks in yellow t-shirts. The sun was not up yet. The ride from NUS to Changi (from on end of the island to the other end) was about half an hour with no traffic at the early hours of the morning. We were driven in a van that was loaded with boxes and cartons of toys and toiletries, which were to be donated to the less fortunate in Cambodia. After a heavy breakfast at McDonalds at the airport, we took off to Phnom Penh by Tiger Air at 7 am.
Phnom Penh airport is one of the most unique airport I've ever seen. With an open waiting area and surrounding greenery unlike most airports that are surrounded by interconnecting highways and flyovers, this airport looks more like a resort than an airport. We were picked up by a community worker from Harvest Inn. Harvest Inn was the guesthouse that hosted our stay for the next 3 days. The guesthouse comprised of three rooms (each room housing 7 people) one in each storey, with the dining area and kitchen on the ground floor. The times spent within these four walls was one of the most memorable ones of this trip. The 'Life Journey' or LJ sessions which began from the weekly meetings in Singapore continued into our every night meeting/debriefs in Phnom Penh. Every night after a 10 minute or so break, we would gather in one of the rooms to listen to two of our teammate's LJs. Through LJ, we learnt more about each other's backgrounds by sharing the challenges that we've been through, our life-changing experiences, basically everything significant from birth to where we are today to what we hope to do in the future. LJ also enabled us to understand each other's personality, e.g. the way they speak tells us about their personality, whether they are full of sense of humour, their interest and passion in life. We have had teammates with backgrounds that ranged from running into family bankruptcy and having to pass secondary school by studying under the street lights, to one who were so violent at school in the past but turned over to a new leaf and decided to volunteer in an orphanage for abused children.
Our daily life in Phnom Penh was simple and yet, rewarding. On the first day, we visited HIV positive children in three orphanages. It pains to hear from Rainbow Bridge (the NGO we were working with in Cambodia) that fire had broke out in one of the orphanages a month ago and children had to be sorted to other orphanages. These children were very well-behaved and very independent. The age group ranged from about 5 to 16 years. Most of them were left here by their parents since they were little, after the parents discovered the disease in their child; some parents do come to pay visits to their child once a month or so. Every evening after we've left the orphanage, I would have so many questions to myself and to God. Why are we and these children, both born into this world, made of flesh and bones, yet one must suffer through such a fatal disease, living a life at the margin between life and death, a life that you don't even know if you would be alive tomorrow and deprived of all those experiences and dreams that all human beings have the right to and even being deprived of being treated like a normal human being; and on the other side, there is us, who are so fortunate: with a complete family, getting the best education and having the best of friends? And yet we complain and grieve over such issues as academic and relationships? One may have hundreds of such questions when we come across experiences like these but who can provide the answer? Certainly not humanity.
Another thing that surprised me (the first being their independence, ability to take care of themselves, e.g. taking the meds on time) was their lack of emotions every evening when we leave after spending the entire day with them. Under usual circumstances, when we spend time with a child and the child begins to get along with us, he/she would show signs of unwilling to us go at the time when we are about to leave. But our team sensed no such reaction with the HIV positive kids: when we get on the bus, preparing to leave, they would only wave with a smile on their innocent faces. Our question was finally answered by one of the senior officials: it is because every year, several groups like us, would come to visit them; and they soon realized that when we are gone, we would never (or very close to never) come back again. The kids have become used to seeing this every year: being visited once a while by a group of people who have come from somewhere far away and the people would disappear after a few days, with no signs of returning, which, in turn, raises another question: Why is it that these children even have to suppress their emotions, or rather, is it fair that such young minds have to undergo such experience that make them emotionally numb?
Beginning with the 1st of January, at 9 am, brother drove me to the Pearson International Airport to fly to Taipei. New Year Day is an ideal day to travel: no morning-rush-hour traffic. But it is going to be a long flight of 15 hours and 25 minutes (to be exact) to Shanghai. After 4 hours and 10 minutes of lay-over in Shanghai, there is another hour and 55 minutes before reaching Taipei. With that in mind, I was determine not to sleep on New Year's Eve; getting ready to walk into a new year, like a child, not knowing what lies ahead but certainly looking forward to living on another side of the globe.
I can barely believe it's December now. December is the season of thanksgiving, the month when Christ was born to reconcile us to God, the season of giving and baking cakes and goodies. While everybody is busy preparing for their finals at this time, I feel grateful to have no exams but more importantly, grateful that I have this co-op job, aka internship if you're not in the land of maple leaves. Highlighting significant experiences from the last 11 months:
The Cambodian Experience
If you happen to be at Changi Airport around 5am on May 22, 2017, you might have seen a group of 21 excited folks in yellow t-shirts. The sun was not up yet. The ride from NUS to Changi (from on end of the island to the other end) was about half an hour with no traffic at the early hours of the morning. We were driven in a van that was loaded with boxes and cartons of toys and toiletries, which were to be donated to the less fortunate in Cambodia. After a heavy breakfast at McDonalds at the airport, we took off to Phnom Penh by Tiger Air at 7 am.
Phnom Penh airport is one of the most unique airport I've ever seen. With an open waiting area and surrounding greenery unlike most airports that are surrounded by interconnecting highways and flyovers, this airport looks more like a resort than an airport. We were picked up by a community worker from Harvest Inn. Harvest Inn was the guesthouse that hosted our stay for the next 3 days. The guesthouse comprised of three rooms (each room housing 7 people) one in each storey, with the dining area and kitchen on the ground floor. The times spent within these four walls was one of the most memorable ones of this trip. The 'Life Journey' or LJ sessions which began from the weekly meetings in Singapore continued into our every night meeting/debriefs in Phnom Penh. Every night after a 10 minute or so break, we would gather in one of the rooms to listen to two of our teammate's LJs. Through LJ, we learnt more about each other's backgrounds by sharing the challenges that we've been through, our life-changing experiences, basically everything significant from birth to where we are today to what we hope to do in the future. LJ also enabled us to understand each other's personality, e.g. the way they speak tells us about their personality, whether they are full of sense of humour, their interest and passion in life. We have had teammates with backgrounds that ranged from running into family bankruptcy and having to pass secondary school by studying under the street lights, to one who were so violent at school in the past but turned over to a new leaf and decided to volunteer in an orphanage for abused children.
Our daily life in Phnom Penh was simple and yet, rewarding. On the first day, we visited HIV positive children in three orphanages. It pains to hear from Rainbow Bridge (the NGO we were working with in Cambodia) that fire had broke out in one of the orphanages a month ago and children had to be sorted to other orphanages. These children were very well-behaved and very independent. The age group ranged from about 5 to 16 years. Most of them were left here by their parents since they were little, after the parents discovered the disease in their child; some parents do come to pay visits to their child once a month or so. Every evening after we've left the orphanage, I would have so many questions to myself and to God. Why are we and these children, both born into this world, made of flesh and bones, yet one must suffer through such a fatal disease, living a life at the margin between life and death, a life that you don't even know if you would be alive tomorrow and deprived of all those experiences and dreams that all human beings have the right to and even being deprived of being treated like a normal human being; and on the other side, there is us, who are so fortunate: with a complete family, getting the best education and having the best of friends? And yet we complain and grieve over such issues as academic and relationships? One may have hundreds of such questions when we come across experiences like these but who can provide the answer? Certainly not humanity.
Another thing that surprised me (the first being their independence, ability to take care of themselves, e.g. taking the meds on time) was their lack of emotions every evening when we leave after spending the entire day with them. Under usual circumstances, when we spend time with a child and the child begins to get along with us, he/she would show signs of unwilling to us go at the time when we are about to leave. But our team sensed no such reaction with the HIV positive kids: when we get on the bus, preparing to leave, they would only wave with a smile on their innocent faces. Our question was finally answered by one of the senior officials: it is because every year, several groups like us, would come to visit them; and they soon realized that when we are gone, we would never (or very close to never) come back again. The kids have become used to seeing this every year: being visited once a while by a group of people who have come from somewhere far away and the people would disappear after a few days, with no signs of returning, which, in turn, raises another question: Why is it that these children even have to suppress their emotions, or rather, is it fair that such young minds have to undergo such experience that make them emotionally numb?
