Y11 Ella Lee - Phang Nga, Thailand
As I’m sure many Y11s can attest to, CAS Challenge Week was a formative part of my IB experience. It was the first time I did any sort of community service outside of Hong Kong — compared to community service in lower years when I visited kindergartens or elderly care centres to spread Christmas or Lunar New Year cheer, Challenge Week would be, as per the name, a challenge. I was assigned to the Phang Nga group in Thailand, which would board at a school called Yaowawit. Our main service would be teaching the Thai kids English, with side quests such as a jungle camp, bathing elephants and visiting a turtle conservatory. At first, I was nervous that I wouldn’t get along with my fellow classmates or the kids at Yaowawit due to my introverted nature. Little did I know that by the end of the week, I would be missing Yaowawit and the many memories I had made.
The most important part of the Phang Nga experience was volunteering at Yaowawit school, logue and farm. Built after the 2004 tsunami that devastated Phuket and its surrounding regions, Yaowawit gives underprivileged children a quality education and boarding on its stunning campus located within the mountains of Phang Nga. At Yaowawit, we helped teach the kids English, ranging from the alphabet to vocabulary for fruits, clothes and transportation. I liked thinking up activities to make the lesson more engaging, taking inspiration from teachers who were happy to help. I asked the kids to teach me a little bit of Thai as well, which they did enthusiastically, and they giggled at my difficulty in deciphering the Thai alphabet. After dinner every night, we had an evening playtime session with the kids followed by meditation. They invited us into their games with open arms — in fact, we were shyer at first than they were. However, we were playing along with them in no time, reliving our primary memories of tag and rock-paper-scissors. I had never danced or played so freely in my life as I did during that week. Even though the kids at Yaowawit were less privileged than we were, they were optimistic and friendly, welcoming us even though we were strangers to them — truly, Thailand is dubbed the Land of Smiles for a reason.
The fun times in Phang Nga were endless. We went to a jungle camp where we caught insects, conquering our fears of these six-legged invertebrates, and roasted marshmallows over an open campfire that were then used to make delicious s’mores. We learnt how to make papaya salad and glutinous rice balls in sweet coconut milk for dinner. We went tubing on a crystal clear river and held onto each other’s hands for dear life, lest someone be washed away by the current. We got to know more about the local flora and fauna; for the first time in my life, I bathed Asian elephants and held a baby green turtle in my hand. Every fun experience was an opportunity to grow as well: throughout these seven days with each other, we grew closer as friends, becoming more independent and empathetic individuals. I remember how we all gathered in the kitchen after dinner one night to help wash the dishes out of our own volition and encouraged the kids on duty to join evening playtime with everyone else. Our supervisor, Ms Gill, was definitely proud of us that night!
When Challenge Week drew to a close, we eagerly looked forward to riding the school bus that had carted us through the mountains in the previous days, only to realise, with shock, that we would be taking a car back to the airport instead. The event unfolded like something in a Chinese writing composition — we had grown to love the rickety yellow bus that we had been so reluctant to get on the day we landed in Phuket. More than a few tears were shed at the fact that we never got to go on a formal goodbye-joyride.
I’ve made a good many fond memories in Phang Nga that I still look back on to this day, even after IB has made me a little more burnt-out and cynical. Sometimes, I feel like I’m longing for a home I can’t go back to — a hiraeth, as the Welsh say. I’m grateful for the connections I forged on this trip with both the Yaowawit kids and my classmates, some of whom I still am friends with to this day. Thanks for the girls’ nights, you guys — you know who you are! When all is said and done, this Challenge Week has taught me that maybe, the point of CAS isn’t to pass IB or rack up a few good additions to our resumes. Maybe, it’s about the friends we made along the way.