Day 3: Another Day, Another Chance to help Phong Thanh!

Today, like yesterday (if you have not read Day 2's blog post, you can find it here!), started off early in the morning, but with more tired and sleepy faces due to the previous day's hard work at the Phong Thanh school. Some of us were so sleepy that we couldn't even spread the peanut butter and chicken floss onto our breads!!

Looking at everyone's morning faces really puts me in a sleepy mood as well! HAHA WAKE UP LEH GUYS

Grumpy Shi Mei at 630am in the morning, warning anyone against disturbing her.

Again, all of us trekked to the Phong Thanh school. The long and cooling walk definitely rejuvenated all of us, and by the time the 10min long walk was over, our sleepiness was blown away and we were ready for work.

Entering the Phong Thanh Primary compounds for the second time!

Today, the teaching team were tasked with teaching new words to the kids, based on the theme of Animals and Colours. Members from the teaching team used songs, dances and games to entice the children to learn together, and judging from their wide smiles and excited chatter, they definitely enjoyed the session with today's team!

Teaching animal names sounds and sounds via the popular nursery song, Old Macdonald had a Farm!

Rukhsana and Dickson blending in with the kids whilst clapping along to the song.

Felicia, Sadrina, Yin King and Patrick trying to imitate monkeys! Can you see the 100% resmblence?

Using Match the Words to teach the Vietnamese kids about the different animals in English!

Bringing the lesson outdoors with an intense game of Dog and Bone

For the second teaching session after lunch (like yesterday, we had a 1h lunch-cum-nap break back at the commune!), things got more hands-on, as the same team then got the children to make animal masks of their favourite animals.

Buddies Wan Ling and Ying  Zhen were part of today's teaching team, and they successfully made new friends today!

Our students hard at work drawing their favourite animals on paper plate masks.

Say MOOOOOOOOOOO!

Also, thanks to our generous sponsors, LollyTalk, we were able to give away LollyTalk candy as prizes to children who did well in their drawings and participation today! These yummy and colourful candies definitely encouraged the kids to speak up and participate, and not long later, even the shyer students were vying for some of these coveted sweets!

Ying Zhen dropping a few LollyTalk hard candies into a student's hand for answering her question correctly!

Even our COR member Sadrina is excited that one of her pupils have won a packet of LollyTalk candy!!

Kudos for winning a pack of LollyTalk candy for her well-drawn animal mask!

Back at the construction site, where the building team were concurrently hard at work, their task was different from Day 2's menial labour. Today, their job was to paint cement onto newly constructed roof tiles. The purpose of the cement paint, was to seal up any holes in the tiles, so as to prevent leakage in case of rain! Some others were tasked with removing the old doors and windows from their hinges and washing them carefully.

Hulk team completed their painting really quickly!

Painting under the pleasant skies of Vietnam.

Construction workers Lucas and Ellias helping to lift tiles on to the top of the building. Don't they look handsome in their hard hats?

Getting all wet and dirty whilst giving the doors and windows a good scrub!

Once we painted 2 or 3 layers of cement onto the tiles and the doors and windows all scrubbed, all of us took on windows in groups and sanded them down, so that they could be painted on afterwards. Sanding is definitely no easy task, and all of us had aching arm muscles afterwards!

Cass and Yining stopping for a pose in the midst of sanding the window grilles.

Dave and Eelin painting the sanded grilles with a fresh coat of grey.

As we warmed up to the hospitality and friendly smiles of the Phong Thanh villagers at the school today, we thoroughly enjoyed Day 3 at the school, and are looking forward to tomorrow's activities!!