Going to Nepal (Summer 2010)

After two group meetings and hours of effort put into writing up lessons for the kids of rural Nepal, approximately twenty of us Eden Social Welfare Foundation International Volunteers started out from Taiwan, taking China Airlines to Hong Kong, where we transfered to Nepal Airlines. The Nepal Air flight was so cool! The plane was small, and there was water leaking from above the windows, and it kept dripping onto the volunteer who sat beside me. At first, we thought it'd stop in a moment, but it later got so annoying that I gave her a ball of crumpled tissue paper to stick into its source on the ceiling. Later, when I got up to go to the toilet, I saw that there was an entire row of tissue paper jammed into the indentation above the windows.(So apparently, we weren't the only ones.) Other than that, the Nepali kid who sat behind me constantly punched the back of my seat all throughout the flight (though I hadn't minded becuase I thought it was just some kindergartener). Towards the end of the six hour flight, we started a conversation with the Nepalis sitting behind us by chance. I learned that the "kindergartener" who had been punching at my chair was a karate student from Kathmandu, and he had went to Hong Kong to participate in a karate championship (though unfortunately, he hadn't made it). He was fourteen years old. Anyways, I was really glad to have met new friends during the flight. . . and I was so excited about going to Nepal.

  

  

Volunteering

I <3 volunteer work! It's one of the fundamental nutrients that keep my life going (especially during exam week, when things are nervous and frustrating, I'd tell myself that I get to go do volunteer work once I get through the semester). This may sound weird to some people, but volunteering is my hobby. I guess that this has a lot to do with my parents. . .

The company my dad used to work for has ran a few charity projects before, and he had also supported several kids through World Vision Taiwan. . . and in return, these kids wrote letters to dad. I've been through these postals several times before, including letters from El Salvador, Mongolia, Romania, Vietnam, and other regions in Taiwan. Some are letters from the children with messages and drawings (for those who can't write yet). The rest are files from the organisation that evaluate how the kids have been doing. To be honest, these postals don't really reveal much about what these kids are really like, but that was how I started to take interest in people. . . I want to get into their lives, and see what their world is like. But later, these kids gradually grew independent, and the supports came to an end one by one. Now, my dad's retired, but he still talks to me about economic issues, philosophy (he doesn't like to use this word, but that's what it is), and other stuff.

As for my mom, she was the CEO of Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation when I was in primary school. Which is why I was so interested in human trafficking and domestic violence at the time. But although my mom was in the social welfare sector, I didn't get to help with anything because I don't think it was possible for an eleven year old to have counseled the victims of violence or went to court against the human traffickers. So instead, I did a project presentation about human trafficking when I was in primary six ( I had originally chosen to write about global warming, but thought better when a dozen other people chose the same topic).


Although I've constantly been in touch with the social welfare sector through my mom, the first time I really did volunteer work (excluding a time when I helped dig around a lake to protect Isoetes taiwanensis), was when I joined the Eden International Volunteers in Nepal, the summer of 2010.