Travel to Teach: Volunteer Stories

Dips teaching at Michai school

Dipesh (Dips), 22, UK

My T2T experience can only be described as ‘phenomenal’. I arrived on the final day of the great festival of Song Kran in the beautiful land of smiles. I made my way to Nong Khai where I was welcomed by a great group of other T2T volunteers. Who would have thought that this was the beginning to a life changing experience?...

I began my adventure in Nongkhai teaching English whilst organising activities and games for the Meechai Summer School. What a fantastic time this turned out to be! The kids were brilliant with so much energy and enthusiasm. From day one I realised the exceptional welcome and respect you get as a teacher from the students, together with their hunger to learn. My class was the youngest group, which I thought would be very tough. However, I was definitely mistaken as this turned out to be so much fun and was startled to see so much talent and creativity from such young ones.

The second week was spent carrying out team activities and games with all the classes in the school. Although running around with 40 wild children in the tropical heat is more than exhausting, it was well worth it. On the final day of the Meechai Summer School the volunteers received flowers from all the children as a gesture of kindness; it made me realise how much the children appreciated all the help from us.

A couple of days during the week, we as the volunteers would go to the Wat (Buddhist Temple) to teach English to the Monks. Their hospitality was most welcoming with their friendly manner. They were always very curious to learn about our cultures back home and together we learned so much about Buddhism and Thai culture. Being blessed by the Monks with holy water on my last day was definitely an overwhelming feeling.

Meechai dorm was a new project that was started by T2T during my arrival. Together with another volunteer Prakash we set up the new IT centre in the dorm to focus on teaching IT to people of all ages and backgrounds. Initially we created a curriculum to get the project ready for our first trial group, which were two groups of children aged 6 to 12. We realised that teaching IT to Thai children that spoke limited English was an unquestionably difficult task. However, we were totally amazed that the children picked up everything we taught so quickly. They produced some fantastic pieces of work showing aspects of typing skills, artwork and creativity. Our curriculum allowed us to help them learn and understand English whilst building their IT skills simultaneously.

Prakash and I were also involved in teaching University undergraduates at the dorm. For a few hours a day we were teaching grammatical English to these students and over the weeks we were able to help them gain their confidence in conversing in the language.

Apart from all the teaching there was always so many other things to do; eating out as it is so cheap and excellent food, swimming, playing table tennis, relaxing in the Green dorm, great nights out in Nong Khai, badminton and of course trips away from Nong Khai. Thanks to the flexibility of T2T, together with several other volunteers we had some great adventures. We organised a weekend trip to Laos which was a simple matter of crossing the friendship bridge from Nong Khai. This is a beautiful place to visit and is a ‘must’ for all volunteers. We did some great activities here which included the adventurous kayaking drowning experience and relaxing in a café for 5 hours watching ‘Friends’. We also travelled 15 hours to Chiang Mai where I went crazy on shopping, elephant riding in the jungles and bamboo rafting in heavy rain (we were protected by silly umbrella hats of course!).

Overall I can strongly say that this was the most rewarding and unforgettable experience of my life. I am proud to say I have helped make a difference in Nong Khai with the teaching and new IT centre. I am overwhelmed that I have made friends with so many other volunteers from all over the world and can confidently say that Nong Khai was definitely my home away from home.

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