I always believe that everyone had a huge dream when they were little kids. So do I. My ambitious dream was to change the world with my own efforts, which directly encouraged my decision going abroad as a global volunteer. At first, everything seemed unbelievable. We just talked a lot about Malaysia and imagined the situation we are in a foreign country, making friends with native people, enjoying the different delicious food there. Until we finally settled down, I still think it an incredible dream that we made it.
Our project is about COP (clean our plate), which is also advocated in our country. It is said that Malaysia is the country which has the most serious problem about food wastage. Tremendous of people are facing of hunger while a large amount of citizens waste their food without any hesitation, which makes our project become more meaningful. What impressed me most was the soup kitchens and food bank we went. Soup kitchens are the places freely give away the cooked food and other life necessities to the homeless or poor people who are really in need of help. The organizers of them can be any warm-hearted citizens who will be in charge of collecting the donated food ingredients from the public or supermarket. The everyday workers there are all volunteers from different jobs, ages and various regions. Mostly, they work for 5 days one week. I really can’t imagine how these non-profit institutions survive for such a long time. I still remembered the first soup kitchen we visited was Carl’s kitchen which a hard Indian chef was there, who told me that the original founder of this place Karl has passed away for about 10 years. The Street friends are very polite and thankful when we offered the food to them. Without any compulsive requirements, they washed their plates after they ran out of all food, which really shocked me deeply. What’s more, we designed questionnaires about current food waste situation in Malaysia by ourselves and interviewed people in the shopping mall, which definitely challenged our Oral English and courage a lot. Every day, we share different cultures, hobbies or new traditions with our foreign friends. From which the most unforgettable thing in my abroad life was that my overseas friends there gave me two belated birthday surprises in a totally shocked and unbelievable way. One group of my teammates just quietly prepared the birthday cake and candles in the evening, played the guitar for me, While the other group of friends from different projects poured water from my head to feet, and then wiped the cake to my face, clothes. Besides, they hugged me and let me enjoyed their tiny tricks. But I was really moved about their goodness regardless the way of celebrating. Every day, we are excited to have new tasks involved raising the awareness of food saving and helping others. We have been to high school, old folks and goes into the public for some voluntory work. The genious ideas our team thought about was to fry banana skins and stir watermelon skins in order to show students that many parts of the fruit or vegetables can also be eaten but we never pay much attention to it. I still remembered those days even we ourselves can not believe the banana skins are eatable. We did not know whether we can manage cooking it to persuade people or will we be in a good health after we trying the new ingredients first. During our Forum in University, we showed them to university students and some of them said they would pay more attention to the food waste. Besides, we did lots of information searching job for every road show, forum, high school students teaching. Each one has learned a lot and made huge progress in some ways. The nurmerous homeless people, the orphans made us realize that we are so happy compared with other people who really need help. And we will do our best to make us a better person changing the world, improving our life condition even let others feel happy according to our existence. Only when we truely became one part of superwoman who can contribute our little efforts, can we understand the total different cultural differences, and then we can also make other countries know our own country in a good way. What I want to express at last was that I have to admit that this one and a half month really brought me different types of happiness and sadness, and from which I really enjoy it. If I have another chance, I will stil choose the project as a global volunteer. I really miss these lovely friends there.
