Student Life

Assalamu'alaikum readers.

Last monday and tuesday i have been invited to become a facilitator (faci) for an english camp organized by my school, Adni Islamic School. The participants are 12 Thai students, 6 boys and 6 girls aged from 10-20. Yeah, not that many people. This camp is part of the annual program sponsored by my school. Every year my school chooses a few lucky Muslim Thai students all around the different parts of Thailand to study English at my school for one month. The english camp is held at a bungalow owned by the school at Jalan Damai.

All of the facis are Adni alumnis. They are my friends :) On monday morning we meet up at our school. I go there using my motorcycle. Still getting used to riding it :( They all went to the bungalow with Liyana's Myvi. I'm not sure where the bungalow is so i just tailed them using my motor. The jam in the morning was so bad that they are so slow and i can't have the patience to wait for them! Me and my motor just zoomed pass through the cars leaving Liyana's car behind and decided to just wait for them at Jalan Damai. And i did found the street and they arrived on the street just a short while after i did. So we arrived at the huge 2-storey bungalow with the swimming pool.

The Thai students :)

As soon as we arrive we waited for a few minutes for the head faci, Kak Nihlah, our senior to arrive. When she did, she said that the Thai students are going to arrive a little late. So while waiting for the students to come, we discussed and set up the first game for the Thai students which is Treasure Hunt! After we have placed all the clues and checkpoints all over the house, the Thai students arrived. They are a beautiful bunch :) We all have to introduce ourselves first before the first game starts. They also have been divided into three teams, red, blue and yellow.

During the treasure hunt, I have to become the checkpoint at upstairs. Before anyone can go upstairs to search for the next clue, they have to go through the challenge first. The challenge i was appointed to give them is a Crossword Puzzle! They have to finish the crossword before they can continue searching for their clues. The crossword is related to their Genting Highlands trip that they had last week. Overall they did good with the challenge though sometimes i have to help them with their spelling! :P

Some of the other challenges appointed to Liyana, Amalina and Sarah at other parts of the house were solving a Cryptogram and Tongue Twister! The tongue twister is pretty tough even for me :/ They have to memorize and repeat the tongue twister 5 times before they can pass. And for their last challenge, they have to get into the swimming pool to get 2 balloons and pop them! This challenge is the most enjoyable one because the boys have to get wet! Excluding me :P

The boys are afraid to get in the water!

Then at noon, we rested for a while, had lunch and prayed at the mosque right beside the bungalow. The next game was Giant Monopoly! Yep a Monopoly game with 12 players with big tiles, big dice and cups to represent each player! See for yourself at the picture. They are all done by the hardworking Kak Nihlah!

After As'r prayer the students have to go shopping at the supermarket to buy ingredients for dinner which is Spaghetti Bolognese! They went there with Liyana's and Kak Nihlah's cars. Kak Nihlah had to make 2 trips. After we had bought everything on the list, we went home and cooked spaghetti together! You might think that cooking is not a boys' job to do but they did really well in opening the cans and cutting the mushrooms! :P The girls pretty much did the rest :/

Sofron opening the can with a knife

Busrin, 10, our youngest participant is boiling the pasta

They enjoyed their cooking!

After a delicious dinner, theres still some time before Maghrib prayer so the boys and I played ball at the field. We had fun playing Monkey until the ball accidentally got tossed up on the bungalow's roof!

After Maghrib prayer, another faci came to help which is Adam! He's a junior of mine. We played scrabble with the students. We had a lot of scrabble sets so each team gets one scrabble set with one faci accompanying them. The students did great job at this game :)

Then after Isha' prayer we watched a movie, Meet The Robinsons! We have a laptop connected to the projector and the room was cold so it was a perfect moment for a movie! The students even made rootbeer floats for themselves! The students seem to enjoy the movie but I don't think they understand the movie plot even though with subtitles.. But it's alright :) And since the room where we watched the movie is also the room where the boys and I are going to sleep in, we decided to watch an action movie till we sleep and that movie is Terminator 2! The movie only got through halfway because i realized that all the boys are sleeping already at that time. So i switched off the projector and went to sleep myself.

We woke up at 6am for Fajr prayer. After some cleaning up in the bedroom and kitchen. The boys and I went for a swim all the way till 8.30am! We had a lot of fun in the water :) And then the rest of the day we didn't really follow the real tentative of the program for a couple of reasons. We just watched movies, played games on our laptops, continue playing scrabble, giant monopoly and many more. I went home right after the rain stopped around 6.30pm and the Thai students went back to their hostel at around 7pm.

The name of all the facis who helped with the camp :)

Overall, I had a lot of fun with the Thai students. Even though communicating with them is a bit difficult, but i guess thats what makes it special. :) We communicate with them with really basic english and even that is tough for them. Some of them came from southern Thailand so they can speak Kelantanese Malay and i can understand them a bit. We should be thankful that here in Malaysia that we are given english education and we can speak english decently. I asked them if they learnt english in Thailand and they said that they do learn it, but really little. Hopefully this annual program done by my school will help these kids to improve their english. And for me myself, it has been a great experience :)


Ok I need to get ready to go to PWTC now. I'm volunteering to help at a booth at the book fair. More on that on the next post :) Thanks for reading!