Valley Homestead, November 19-21, 2012
Yes, we are in Benalla now. We will have another three weeks in this phase. However, our first weekdays were not spent in Benalla. What we have for the first week was at immersion camp. Immersion camp was a camp that attended by students in year 10 and 11 from many schools in Victoria. There were 45 students in this three days full of fun activities, and the AIYEPers assisted the Indonesian teacher in whole activities, to make the students better in speaking Bahasa Indonesia. We also meet some Indonesian people there, the language assistants! They are the alumni of Indonesia University of Education who are already in Victoria almost 1 year to be a language assistant in Bahasa Indonesia at schools.
First day
We arrived in Valley Homestead after 2 hours trip from Benalla city, The view in this place was wonderful. Students came and they took a rest after long trip from melbourne. Bell was ringing, calling them for Lunch. They gathered in Dining room and Ronda, the Coordinator of Camp, gave some rules in the Homestead. After lunch Commitee give some ice-breakers for them. First, Speed Dating. They were facing each other and give some question in Bahasa about their name, school, adress, how many brother and sister and etc. They were really enthusiast with the game. The next game coming. They should find their family from the paper that they got. Wonderful! The clue in the paper written with Bahasa Indonesia and they clearly knew about it. After that, all the people went backside of the camp do some outbound activities. In the evening, the students had some group activities to know more about Indonesia and watched indonesian movie.
Second Day
It’s time for Adik AIYEP. We have an hour to make wonderful experience with AIYEP 2012. We divided the Participants for 4 group and make a discussion about Indonesia and also about AIYEP. The purpose of Adik AIYEP is to make the students become more interested about Indonesia, so that they can visit Indonesia to learn more about the culture, the relation between these two countries, and joning AIYEP can be one of the way to reach it.
The next activity is ‘Feeling Indonesian’ with Dancing, Singing, Wayang, Martial Art and Cooking. In dancing, they learned some traditional dances from Indonesia, Saman and Tari Piring. They were also cooking Indonesian simple cuisine, such as Mie Goreng, Pisang Aroma and Sate Ayam. They were really enjoy with the meals that they made by theirselves.
In Wayang class there were paper prototype and they have to coloring and cutting that and give some stick to make a wayang. In martial art class, they actually learn how to kick, hit and also some of movement in Pencak Silat. Afterwards, the students have to perform all what they have got in the evening cultural performance. In this show, AIYEPers doing the saman dance and the students performances were fantastic!
Third Day
The last day. After had breakfast, all the people have to pack up the luggages before 9 a.m. the first activity is practicing how bargain in Bahasa Indonesia. The AIYEPers were pretending to sell some stuffs and the students have to bargain before they buy. The second was Amazing Race game. The students had to find some spots which is on every spot the AIYEPers is ready to give the challenge. The highlight of the day is the Agustusan event. The students played a lot of Agustusan games, such as Lomba Makan Kerupuk, Memasukkan Paku ke Dalam Botol, Sendok Kelereng, Poco-Poco, and that was amazing!
After all the games and had lunch, it’s time to go home. What a wonderful experience in immersion camp! Hoping all we learned and shared can contribute something for the future 😀 . – Adhit & Ollid
AIYEP 2012 