“I found out about Global Nomadic through searching volunteer trips on the internet. My pre departure planning went well. My main aims for this project is become a better teacher and gain more experience. Along the way I would like to learn about the culture and learn to accommodate to different situations.Once reaching Malaysia, the staff took care of me very well.An orientation was given and the staff explained what the introduction week will be clearly as well as teaching at the kindergarten. The staff provided me food and comfortable room. With my food restrictions and being a vegetarian the staff accommodated to the best of their ability. The local area was quite interesting and I loved learning about the culture. All the activities planned during the intro week gave me better knowledge about the culture and customs. During the two weeks I spent in Malaysia I became good friends with other volunteers in the house. I have not yet started doing any activities at the project. This first week will be my intro week.
I think that this project does make an impact in its field. As teacher I think it is important to be able to work with all children. Working with children from a different country challenges and I think made me a better a teacher. The point of teaching to make a difference in the community and educate children. This project helps expose children from a small village to new things that they may not learn in a typical day. I think that I did make a difference at the project. I saw that the children were not used to singing and dancing. Bringing new activities to them helped them break out of their shell. Some challenges I encountered is the language barrier. It was hard to explain activities to the children and communicate with them when they do not understand English and vis versa. I really wanted to engaged in more conversation to get to the children a little better so language barrier made that difficult. Also, it was difficult to come up with new activities when working with limited materials. However, even with these barriers and challenges I was still able to communicate with the children and do activities through using hand motions and the help of the teachers. One of my coordinators who came in with me helped me think of new ideas to bring to the children as well. I am proud of my self overall for going to a new place on my own. I was able to immerse myself into the community and culture, allowing me to push myself forward.
The project met my expectations and I would highly recommend this project to a friend. Some activities I have done is a city walk tour, bike tour, visited museums, kayaked, saw orangutans, and visited a local cave. I spent time doing many activities with the children as well in the school. We did arts and crafts, learned about animals, played games and sang many songs.”
by Krupa Vaidya 2017
