“Hi! We have to repair the water tap, flatten the schoolyard, paint the walls and give some classes to the students!” These are the first words I heard from our Korean team leader as I arrived in Sengadu Primary school in the morning of 19th January.

The next question was: “Have you ever done manual work before?” My honest answer: “No.”

“Then you can start straightaway!” In the following two weeks, I managed indeed to take part in almost all the activities being done. And although painting was definitely my favorite, I can say that I enjoyed them all. On said Monday, I arrived in a school with grey dirty buildings, a messy schoolyard full of stones and holes and a broken iavatory. The transformation my Korean fellow volunteers and I could witness every day seemed miraculous. In our breaks, we would walk around the buildings to see what had been changed in the last hours.

“I can´t believe this is the same school”, was a sentence to be heard frequently. “Me neither!” On Thursday, 27th January, we left a colorful school with working water taps and a big space to play for the students. However, the achievements of Happy Move Camp cannot be reduced to the physical changes. The last two weeks were weeks of friendship, of learning and new experiences. I heard about the different types of Korean food, everyday life at Korea´s universities, traditional Korean mindsets, and the festival of light in Seoul city. I got in touch with lots of new friends whom I would not have met otherwise and got an insight into a culture that was until then not particularly present in my mind. And, finally, there were the students of Sengadu who kept diverting us during the breaks.

“What is your name?” No matter if the name they were told was Corinna or Lee Hye Jin, they did their best to pronounce it correctly. Thanks to them, our breaks were full of games and joy. The last time I did so much rope skipping or clapping games was when I was in primary school myself.

As we left, there was nobody among us who was not feeling sad. I thank everybody who participated in the Camp for two awesome weeks and I am happy to have got that opportunity!

Nandri, or, in Korean, gamsahada!