[HCInteract] VOCIP / Taiwan Exchange

Interact club had an opportunity to engage in virtual overseas CIP (VOCIP) as part of a year-end project. I had the honour of being the team leader for this project which lasted 10 weeks.

For Interact’s VOCIP, we worked with WAH Foundation and served BHI students in Kampong Chhnang in Cambodia. In 10 weeks, our team prepared to teach them conversational English and also took the chance to engage in cultural exchange with the students there.

I remember my first impression of the Cambodian students was that they were really enthusiastic learners. Fearing that things may be awkward because the engagement session was done through ZOOM, I already had conversation starters planned in mind and had even learned a few Khmer phrases in case our conversations ran to a stop. I didn’t need to use any of them. The Cambodian students were constantly engaged and never feared to clarify their doubts if they didn’t understand the things that we were teaching.

Something that I still remember to date is the session when we talked about food. As part of our pre-lesson preparation, we googled to find out more about the cuisines in Cambodia and the local snacks that were most commonly enjoyed. Yet during the lesson, we found that all our research had been wrong as none of the researched snacks was even recognised by the students. One of the snacks we had found - fried tarantulas - was even met with fear and disgust by some of the students there. I think this really reminded us that while Google can be used as a reference to find out more about another’s culture, it can also deeply misrepresent the actual picture of the local community. That’s why spending the effort to talk to and listen to people from different cultures to find out more about them is so important.

After VOCIP, some of us continued to engage in an online cultural exchange with students from Taiwan, Nan Shan High School. Continuing as the team leader, I organised my team to come up with 2 days worth of sharing that could engage the Taiwan students. Through this, we explored our school campus, filmed tours, and shared more about our CCAs and Singapore as a whole. As usual, the Taiwan students were really enthusiastic and welcoming on ZOOM, so much so that it felt as though I was catching up with old friends although it was our first time meeting on ZOOM. Though geographically distant, we connected over similar schooling experiences (mountains of homework, difficult Math etc.) and pop culture like famous singers and actors that we were all following. It was heartwarming to see everyone warm up to one another - even those who were not confident in using Chinese gradually grew accustomed to talking to the Taiwanese students.

Experiences like these that allow me to learn more about another culture remind me that there is a whole world out there for me to explore - as long as I keep an open mind and stay curious about the World around me, there will always be so much for me to learn and find out.