COUNTRY: Maldives
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Swimming Coaching
WRITTEN BY: Susanna Tieu, Christian Ibrahim, Emily Phillips
Susanna Tieu
After a hectic week preparing, planning and delivering lessons for the holiday camp at Sharafuddin School, we were all looking forward to the weekend. As you would have predicted, we all shared 8 hours of beautiful sleep together. The plan for Friday was to spend a day washing our clothes, catching up on work and going to a sunset barbecue organized by Misbah and Suna overlooking the breathtaking blue water that surrounds this beautiful place. Since our lunch and dinners are not included in the weekend, for lunch on Friday, most of us cycled to Royal Pins and shared a feast with each other. Not long after, a truck arrived on our doorstep ready to take us to a private beach location to have a barbecue dinner.
Once we arrived, we took many photos of the sunset, the water and of ourselves.
As we stared into the distance, we realized that our days here only seem to go by faster. Personally, I cannot believe I am here in the Maldives with such a diverse, passionate and inspirational bunch of people doing what I love best.
For dinner, we had baked potato, scrumptious special salad, and 3 different types of fish: Wahoo, Barracuda and Tuna as well as chicken skewers and a chef’s special sauce. This was by far the best dinner we have had so far on the trip. Our very own Aly and Christian caught the Barracuda which we then had for dinner, great catch guys!
For Saturday (the last day of our weekend), on our agenda today we travelledto an uninhabited island 22 minutes away by boat from where we currently are staying and spent the day swimming, snorkeling and really taking in all of our surroundings. It was great to just have a day just relaxing, taking 1000 photos and playing Frisbee in the turquoise clear water. It was paradise. We ended the day sharing a family dinner at the guesthouse, which included a mix of veggies, chicken and wild rice! It was scrumptious!
Christian Ibrahim
The Maldives has proven to be more of a paradise than I had imagined, albeit a HOT one. To live here under Maldivian skies is like being in a postcard - and to be clear we are living here, not just staying; I refer to our guest house as 'home'!
This week has seen us get underway in our teaching, an experience that has been both very challenging and extremely rewarding. The students of the Maldives are similar in many ways to Australian students, but also a world apart; they are extremely softly spoken and reserved when interacting with teachers, mostly due to the difference in teaching style. I have quickly learned that to get the most out of a class I need to go in with extreme enthusiasm and maintain that energy in order to run a lesson in which the students not only learn something, but also have a lot of fun doing it! To look at my own experience this was most evident in teaching primary drama. Seeing that I am a Human Movement student, the content was immediately out of my comfort zone. However, being paired with Aly (who is a fantastic primary teacher), we soon saw timid students transform into energetic 'Wild Things' (we were teaching from the picture book 'Where the Wild Things Are').
Our days have been long and taxing for many of us, however we remember where we are and take on a new enthusiasm in the afternoons. Much of this enthusiasm is used to plan lessons and structure for the following day, but getting out and having fun is always on the cards. After school on Tuesday we piled on the back of a pickup truck (the preferred mode of transport for large groups) and headed to the Hankede Bridge for a swim in yet another postcard scene. While it was amazing to swim in turquoise water, watch the sun set over the palm trees and see the moon rise over the ocean, the highlight for me was seeing Suzanna push way out of her comfort zone and doing the bridge jump. It was an exhilarating bit of fun for most in the group but a personal conquest for Suzy!
I am finding this experience so much more rewarding than travelling as a tourist. Our humble group has been integrated into the community and we are experiencing the culture on a much more intimate level than if we were staying at a resort. I will sign off with a phrase from Molly, "YOMO" (You only Maldives once) - However I do believe I will be back!
Emily Phillips
It's week two of our Maldivian adventure and this week we embarked upon our first week of teaching prac. Nervously, we made our way into Sharafuddin and Hithadoo school, and met our Maldivian and Indian teachers. We need not have been afraid! The staff and students welcomed us into their school with smiles and many handshakes, and we felt like celebrities for the day, signing our autographs for the students, and hearing our names whispered and called out wherever we went. This week has been a roller coaster of highs and lows, with many of us facing what might be some of the biggest challenges of our teaching careers so far, however there are so many rewarding moments when we see all of our hard work pay off in the faces of the children that we teach. We are taking each day as it comes, and are learning that we are capable of more than we ever thought possible. At the end of the school day, afternoons are spent teaching swimming to grade four and five students over at our local swimming spot. We are a curious sight for the locals, riding our bikes through the street with kick boards and floaties attached to every spare inch of ourselves and our vehicles that we can find.
This weekend we will be heading over to spend the day at a resort on the island, to relax and refresh, ready to tackle all of the challenges that next week will present us with. We will also be spending our fundraising money on new library books and sports equipment for the local schools
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