Feature

Youth camp in Korea-experiences and achievements

Syed Mahfujul Haque Marjan

YOUTH camp for Asia`s future, Korea 2009 was one of the greatest turnarounds in my life as it was my first visit abroad and more importantly I had received the best foreign participant award among 298 participants from 22 countries.

The National Council of Youth Organisation of Korea (NCYOK) arranges this program every year. It invited eight students from Bangladesh to join the camp from July 30 to August 13.The nominated participants were Sherin Farhana Moni, Marjia Rahman student of Mass Communication and Journalism, DU, Tasin Asraf, Department of English, DU, Afnan Naser Chyowdhury and Md.Fahad Ifaj from NSU, Tania Sultana from Iden College and Md. Shafiqur Rahman from Dhaka College. I was leading the team from Bangladesh. As it was a huge program we got to know about many cultures.

As we arrived at Incheon Airport, we met the participants from Malaysia and Srilanka. Then we went to Seoul Garden Hotel. On the morning of 31 July, we attended the opening ceremony wearing our traditional dresses punjabi, pajama and saree. Later in the day, we went to Everland theme park which is the fourth largest theme park in the world. We also visited Hyundai Sungwoo Resort in Gangwon province.

In the resort an Asian food festival, traditional performances, a mini Olympiad and Korean language classes were held .We rendered a song "sadher lau banailo more bairagi" as our 'gerua' dress attracted other participants. After a five day stay in Sungwoo Resort we returned to Seoul on August 5.Then we headed out for the Korean Culture Expedition. In my group there were participants from Korea, Combodia, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan. Our topic was street food of Korea. After we had tasted a good number of Korean food we turned in our report as it got a prize for the pictures we took.

As a part of the program I had to stay with a Korean family for two days. I learned many things from this family. I also took part in Taekwondo (a Korean martial art) training. It was almost like army training.

We visited Seoul National Museum, Seoul University, and also went for the Han river cruise. We went to Seoul N Tower which is 302 feet high. Some of us went to the top of the tower which costs about six dollars.

On August 12 our farewell party was held. In this ceremony my name was announced as the Best Foreign Participant Award and as the prize I received 10.2 mega pixel Samsung digital camera. After the closing ceremony we were busy taking photos. It was really an emotional moment for all of us.

We returned to Bangladesh on 13 August. But memories from the camp will always stay with me for days to come.