Youth Camp!

My good friend Stoney put on a youth camp at his site to teach students from his area about Buddhism, Democracy and HIV/AIDS education. Because there were over 300 kids me and 3 other volunteers came to help out.

The kids lined up for the opening ceremony.

We had to wait for the Governor to show up to open the camp so to kill time they had us dance for the kids....their lives will never be the same.



After the Governor spoke there was a flag ceremony.


And then the students had to crawl through this tube and when they emerged at the end they were blessed by a monk. Stoney's counterpart came up with this idea and we assigned face painting duty. Before the students went into the tube they had to walk buy us and get their face painted with powder/water.

Of course we got painted too.



The next day we ran an HIV/AIDS station where we talked about the importance of safe sex. We taught the students to put on condoms and played lots of games.


Demonstrating correct condom usage.

A hockey-like game. Very entertaining.


In this game the doctor would read out a situation and the students had to run to the right board. During this game we learned how little the students knew about risky behaviors.






On the last night there was a show.

Each of the nine groups put on a skit and then the Americans did one too. Ours was another lesson about condom usage but soon turned into us dancing and getting the students to dance with us.