Sincerely from our hearts to yours...

One of the highlights of our trip will be a visit to an orphanage in Hanoi. We will be setting up a mini library at the orphanage. This will be a chance for us to practise one of our school's values, which is the culture of compassion. Apart from story books, the staff in our school had also donated money generously. To date, a total amount of $945 have been raised. The money will be used to purchase items such as bookshelves, stationery, cushions, etc. in Hanoi.

3 MORE DAYS!

Hello everyone!
I'm guessing everyone's pretty excited about going to Hanoi, Vietnam!
3 More days people! :D

Just a few reminders, the weather now in Hanoi is pretty chilly.
The lowest temperature at the night is 13 °C!
Please remember to bring at least a sweater!

& everyone!
On tuesday right, please be at terminal 2(departure hall), outside starbucks at 7.3OAM! There will be a briefing by the teachers so don't be late!


Thank youuu,
Vanessa Leong :D

4 MORE DAYS!

4 MORE DAYS until we set off for Hanoi! Everyone's really pumped up as the countdown gets shorter and shorter. Preparaton has been pretty good. All of us have made mini booklets about Singapore to give the students from the school we're going to visit. We have also purchased colour pencils for the children at the orphanage to brighten up their day! To add more colour to their lives, we got an ABC puzzle mat which would decorate the floors and their brand new library corner which we'll put together when we get there. We've still got stuff to prepare for this trip(eg. brush up on our vietnamese) but we're still excited as ever!




Stay tuned to see how it goes!
Love,
Arin!

Our Plans in Hanoi

Hi everyone ! i'm Vanessa here !

Anyway, a few of us met up in school yesterday and we discussed some of the things we plan to do when we are in Hanoi. I will now share with you our ideas...

Firstly, we talked about the orphanage that we will be visiting in Hanoi. For the orphanage visit, we are planning to set up a "mini library" corner! At this corner, we'll be able to read books to the children and also at the same time, encourage reading and maybe help them with some basic English. If any of you have books which you don't need anymore and are the kinds with big words for little children, please do bring them along! For this corner, we were thinking of having a poster or banner with slogans like " Reading is Fun ! " and so on. We are also going to give useful things like pencils, sharperners, erasers and rulers to the children at the orphange !!

Then, we talked about the school that we will be visiting in Hanoi. The students at this school are about our age. For this school visit, we will start by having some ice breaking games just to have a little fun! And then after that, we will be having interaction time. For this interaction time, everyone of us has to create our own personalized scrapbook about Singapore so that they can know a little bit more about where we come from. We will have to talk about our scrapbook and tell them more about Singapore and ourselves during this interaction time.This scrapbook will then be given to them for their keeping :D Guidelines about this scrapbook would be given during our next meeting ! And of course, we will also be giving them souveniers from singapore !

That's about it so far! But if any of you do have ideas which you want to share, please do voice it out during the next meeting :D More details about the visits should be given during the next meeting. OUR MEETING IS THIS THURSDAY- 20th NOVEMBER @ 10 A.M. SUNKEN FOYER.

SEE YOU GUYS THERE ! :D

love,
vanessa!

First Vietnamese Lesson

So today was our first Vietnamese lesson with Katie! We realised that Vietnamese is not as simple as it looks. We thought we could just pronounce the words like how we pronounce it in Chinese or English, but nooo we were wrong! Most words do not sound like how they're spelt out. It was quite funny seeing how everybody was new to the whole pronunciation thing and how we were all trying our best to sound like Katie! It was definitely not an easy task for any of us but we still had a lot of fun! Everyone was really enthusiastic about learning Vietnamese. I don't think we can speak fluently yet, but i'm sure we'll get there! Thanks Katie! This lesson really got us more excited for the trip! WE CAN'T WAIT!

xoxo,
Arin & Geraldine

Media Literacy Workshop & Parents' Pre-Trip Briefing

On Thursday, 6th of November 2008, we had our first training session on Media Literacy which would help us with our main assignment for this trip. We'll fill you in more on this assignment later. Our parents also attended a pre-trip briefing session by our travel agent - STA Travel at 7pm. We presented to them what we expect to see, do and learn on this trip. We also received our pack list which excited us most. We're very excited for tomorrow as Katie our friend from Vietnam will be teaching us basic Vietnamese... Oooh how wonderful to be able to converse in simple Vietnamese to the locals as soon as we arrive. Perhaps its good to start by welcoming you to our blog page - "Chao mung ban" which means WELCOME!!!

Intoducing Our Blog Page

Hello everyone! This is a first ever team-blog to record a learning journey to Hanoi, Vietnam we are about to embark on in about 3 weeks time. This blog will record the preparations, developments and daily happenings prior, during and after the trip. We hope that you will gain some insights into this wonderful experiential learning journey to Hanoi on 2 to 6 Dec 2008...