An Unforgettable Summer Volunteer

In the summer, while many students chose to travel or take a rest at home, nine members of the English Crazy Club and one volunteer from America (Aom, Nit, Boom, Jan, Tay, Eve, Ying, Pe, Pom and Kathryn) headed for Phosai district, Ubon Ratchathani to spend ten days at ajann Pim’s house. Ajaan Pim teaches English at Maungyai School and is also as crazy about the English language as us. She has been known as the angle of the kids in the village. We stayed there to set up 3 English Summer Camps for the dirty-faced kids, travel and immerse ourselves in rural living with the villagers.

At night during our first day, we had a long meeting because most of the staff was new. As a result, everything had to be well-prepared to make sure that the following day’s camp at Muangyai School (Big Mangoes) would be perfect. This first camp succeeded because all of the staff did their best by dancing, singing, and teaching English crazily and energetically. Also, around 90 campers were participating in an English camp for the first time. They were excited but approached all activities with excellent motivation. Ajaan Pim surprised us by giving us a small party to celebrate our success. She brought us 5 dishes of Somtum, several kinds of food, and sweet drinks.

The first two-day camp was over and the second two-day camp was fastly approaching. We had a more relaxed meeting because the new staff was now used to running an English camp. Nevertheless, we still had daily reflection time to talk about the problems we encountered and what could be improved for the two remaining camps. Everything was great at the second camp, the 35 kids and 10 staff had lots of fun. The camp was set up under the big trees in Lardyao village. The second day of the camp we took the lovely kids to the forest to find cicadas, red ants’ eggs and chameleons for our dinner. Every group had to find at least a bowl of red ants’ eggs, five cicadas and three chameleons. Teams that found more than the expected numbers would get stickers as a prize. We learned a lot of tricks from the kids to help us to catch these kinds of animals. In addition, we taught them the names of the trees, plants, and animals we found in English.

While we were staying on the camp, some of us got a new name. Aom was called miss forgetful because she always forgot everything, especially her own bag! The staff would constantly hear Aom say “Do you see my bag? I don’t know where I left it”. Nit, a very proud and proper girl was called miss slow. She did everything slowly even when she ran the rotations. Her rotations always finished last!! Boom, Pom and Katryn were called the monkey gang. They did the best monkey impressions when we showed campers how to dance the monkey song. You can see their dancing at youtube.com Oops!!!!!!!!!!!! The last name was the Deung gang. Eve, Ying, and Tay got this name. They seemed to really enjoy playing the Deng Deung game (it is a kind of game we usually use it in the camp) with the kids in all three camps.

The two camps were over. Jan, Tay, Eve, Ying, Pe, and Pom had to leave and there were only four staff left; Aom, Nit, Boom, and Kathryn. We still had one more camp to organize for the next three days. While we were waiting for the last camp to start, there was a three-day temple fair in the village we were staying in. We visited the fair everyday to play the lottery, watch movies and attend the folk dancing concert. Our volunteer Kathryn was especially interested in folk dancing. She loves it and on the last day of this fair we dressed beautifully in the dancing dresses that Ajaan Pim kindly provided us. We danced continuously until a spokesman said goodbye to everyone which meant our dancing time was over.

For the last one day camp, we had to work very hard. This camp was in Nongpakwan School where some kids had to walk 7-10 kms from their house to school. Four staff and 32 campers were not as bad as we had feared. We all fell in love with them because they were lovely and really eager to learn English from us.





Our missions were complete. We were going to leave “Angle Pim”, her nice parents, relatives and some villagers blessed us with the white ropes. They all asked us to visit them again. We will definitely be back soon!!!





We would like to give a big thank you to ajaan Pim, who treated us very well, providing us with food and accommodation. She was our great advisor and like our mother while we were staying there. Thank you to the teachers from all three schools, Muangyai, Lardyao, and Nongpakwan School who gave us a chance to run English camps for their wonderful students. We really had a great time with them. Thank you to all ten crazy staff, you have made this small part of the world smile and have been a great inspiration for the kids to continue learning English and the world happily.

Our ten days had gone by quickly; our world of learning to give has been just opening widely and continually. We believe that this meaningful project has given us with beautiful memories in our university life and is already frozen in our mind and soul. Our journey of learning and giving has just begun.
We will never stop giving good things to the kids who have limited opportunities to get.











written by Atchara Simlee (Aom)