Hang Trinh

Being friendly and enthusiastic.
Living with high social responsibility.
Dedicating time, energy and youth to those less fortunate with hope for a better day…

Those are the things I can feel about the people I met at Phayao University. I came to Phayao on three trips so I had many opportunities to work with the nice people. On each trip I had a different interesting experience with them and the way they worked.

On the first trip, it was the first time I came to Phayao University. It was under construction at that time but it was still beautiful. The big university was located on a mountain with a lot of trees and lakes. Each school was in a different place with different architecture. To travel around the university, people took buses that looked very romantic and were an eye-catching combination of blue and purple.

This trip I went with Ajan Helen from Australia, Ajan Chung from Vietnam,  and Tak and Ann from BABSEACLE to train new students about CLE. We were welcomed warmly from lecturers and students there. We taught students basic CLE knowledge and helped them make lesson plans for the next trip. They were very young and quite shy. I helped them to understand what CLE is and they helped me know how to teach them and strengthen my knowledge. I also learned some new ways for community teaching from Ajan Helen, such as how to divide groups to help students work in the best way and which parts should be taught and which should not. These things are very important to me and helped me when I went back and worked with my students. Thank you Ajan Helen very much. I also made friends with students. We could talk together and that made it easier to work.

On the next two trips we went to communities in other provinces. I could see how hard they worked. Ajan Withoon, the lecturer from Phayao University, supported his students a lot. He helped them understand and have the knowledge to teach the community and he spent hours giving learners advice for their cases. The students made a great effort. They were more and more confident and could resolve some situations in the process of teaching. I liked the way they sat together and reviewed everything after teaching. Students grow from these meetings. I also like the way people go to visit some families, get information and help them resolve their issues later. It is really great that the students take care of each other and the community, which makes everyone better.

Seeing the things they did, I wanted to come back to work with my students too. Thanks for inspiring me. I hope the lecturers and students are healthy and happy and continue doing their great job!

In my mind, Phayao is not only a beautiful university but also a place with many nice people. I used to say to Tak ‘I can understand why he found loving the university so easy’. I hope I can come back to Phayao University someday!