Myanmar Students Join Passage for Custom Program

In March, we hosted a group of fantastic students from Myanmar as part of a custom program. They wrote an article about the experience, which is below:

Namaste (Hello in Nepalese)!!

Ten other students and I just finished a fantastic journey to Nepal. The trip was a success thanks to the hard work of Teri (Tsering), Subba, and Sunil; our passage coordinators. This was a great time for us to acquire experience in nature. By living with nature we learned new skills: expedition behavior, self-leadership, camping skills, and tolerance for adversity. Our classroom was now in the culturally rich foothills of the Himalayas. Each of us got a chance to become a teacher and taught a short class about something she/he was curious about, to the rest of the students. Jonathan Kyaw taught about navigating river systems, Aung Pyae taught us how to read maps, and Ye Eun Shin taught us about the three geographic regions of Nepal.

Trekking was the most challenging part for all of us. Even though there were some students who had minor injuries on the trek, we all made it through. The marvelous views of the mountain we trekked through made us speechless. Once we reached our goal we were so delighted.

Rafting was just indescribable. We paddled through rapids together, saw beautiful views, swam in the river, and camped out in the night. By doing these things together we learned to work as a team, and got closer to each other.

The guides were perfect too! We got to meet Anil Chitrakar for half a day on a tour of the Pashupati temple complex, one of Nepal’s most sacred sites. He was an excellent guy. He’s one of the “movers and shakers” of Nepal. He works for the UNESCO HERITAGE CENTER on conservation and development issues in Nepal. He gives lectures all over the world including talks at Stanford and Harvard Universities. We were lucky to have met and learned so much from Mr. Chitrakar.

The trip gave us a great opportunity to learn about a new culture with our school peers and our passage coordinators, who soon became our friends in Nepal. We just loved the trip. We’ll never forget this trip (even when we become 80 years old). We are already talking about next year’s Passage trip to Nepal.

Written by Lee Jung Yun, Grade 9; International School of Myanmar

PASSAGE CUSTOM PROGRAM (MARCH 19 – 29, 2010)