Day 2: First day at the Phong Thanh Village School

Having gotten "ample rest" the night before, all of us woke up at sunrise (6 am) to prepare for our first day of construction and teaching at the primary school in Phong Thanh.

But before that, our lovely auntie chef once again prepared a sumptuous breakfast of Singaporeans' all time favourite, INSTANT NOODLES!!!!!!!!!!! The dish definitely proved a hit with all of us as there wasn't a single strand of noodle leftover afterwards.

Li Sha eyeing all the instant noodle in the bowl.

With all of us filled up and recharged, we then trudged along the main road, whilst being escorted by a police officer for a 10min walk to the school. For safety reasons (the cars and trucks travelling along the road were way faster than those in Singapore!), we had to walk in a single file. 

Walking in a single file along the main road whilst carrying some construction tools.

Armed with traditional Vietnamese straw hats, gloves and masks provided by the EVG team, the construction team for the day then proceeded to an old, torn down section of the school to prepare for work, whilst the teaching team carried on to a functional classroom to begin the day's lessons.

The first task of the construction team was to clear the roof debris off the premises. Forming a human chain from the site to the dumping grounds, the large chunks of heavy debris were efficiently cleared by the time break time came. Afterwhich, the tables and chairs in the classrooms had to be shifted out to enable more effective cleaning of the classrooms of the debris.

Sadrina and Patrick passing a large chunk of debris as part of the human chain

Strong man Jimmy enjoying the menial task of carrying heavy debris to and fro!

The EVG team resting outside one of the classrooms (whilst the COR members ogled at cute boys and girls dancing in another classroom)

Everyone hard at work, noone was slacking or lazing around.

Spiderman girls satisfied with their progress in cleaning the classrooms with their Spidey powers!

As for the teaching team, they had to teach the school children some basic ABCs for the first lesson, preparing them for the harder English lessons to come in the next few days. For the lesson, we were lucky to have several of the EVG team members helping us as translators! Otherwise we would not have been able to teach the kids properly or even gotten their (very short) attentions!!!

It was definitely one of the more tedious and tiring days of moving and cleaning for the construction team as all of us devoured lunch back at the commune kitchen like hungry lions, and afterwards collapsed into our rooms.

Girls from the construction team sleeping on the floors like legit construction workers!

As our lunch break draws to an end, the dark and grey skies finally gave way to heavy rains, preventing us from returning to the school to continue our tasks. We decided to sit and see if the rain would show any sign of stopping (giving us more time to nap TEEHEE), but after a long period of non-stop heavy rains, it was decided that we should make good use of our time and do a reflection session.

In our first reflection session, the Programmers required us to do a timeline of Day 1, and pen down our feelings of arriving in Vietnam, arriving in Phong Thanh, and cleaning our quarters, etc. We had many mixed feelings, with some saying that they immediately felt homesick and others finding Phong Thanh exceeding their expectations. It was a truly insightful session as we shared our thoughts and feelings with one another.

Hulk with their timeline of Day 1.

Later in the afternoon, the rain slowed to a light drizzle and we had a short games session in the Commune Hall, held by our Programmers. First up was a game of Family Feud, in which we had to guess some popular words depending on the question. For example, "Things that women think men are bad at doing" had hilarious responses from decorating to dressing up! The girls sure agreed with all the answers given while the guys laughed along.

The programmers facilitating a game of Family Feud.

The second game of the day involved getting from one point to the other by the whole group, but the catch was that noone can repeat the moves done by the previous group members. As a result, all of us had to come up with a list of movements, from rolling (TWL hit her head hard on this one and grew and extra brain HAHA) to lunges and skipping. All of us definitely had a good laugh and some exercise on this one!!

TWL reverting to crawling after hitting her head on the table from rolling.

The day's programme ended off with the usual dinner, showers and lights out at 11pm.