Letters from Laos – “My journey to Germany” by Khamsavay Gnommilavong
On September 6th, 2017, Mr Khamsavay Gnommilavong took up the position of the new “Acting Director” of the Lao-German Technical College (LGTC), since the previous director, Mr Somlith Virivong, was asked to work in the Ministry of Education and Sports at the Department of Technical and Vocational Education as Deputy Director. Besides his role as Acting Director, Mr Khamsavay is at the same time also one of the students in the “Elementary” class presently taught by Sandra Uhlig. Within the frame of the class work, he wrote the following article about his time spent in Germany in 2003 and 2005.
My name is Khamsavay GNOMMILAVONG.
I am acting director of Lao-German technical college, I would like to write about Germany when I was study there for 14 years ago.
I worked at Lao-German technical school in 1985 until 2003, after studying Mathematics and Physics at Laos National University in Vientiane. I went to Gross Gerau district lying in the southern Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region in Hessen to study at Hessian institute for Advanced Training in Technology Gross Gerau Hessen. I went to Hessen because the “InWEnt” project (editor’s note: “Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung“, which today operates under the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit” (GIZ)) invited me to there and also paid for my trips. Subjects I studied for first time were programmable logic controller, power electronic and Computer Technology.
I went there the second time in 2005 to study Computer network at the same place. Gross Gerau is small city but very nice place, I liked because it was quiet and safety.
My impression in the every morning and evening I saw dove cooing on the tree besides my room, when dove cooing I was homesick, I don’t know how to do, I went to Penny (mini mark) for brought some food and beer to drink. I liked the weather in Germany it’s cold and sometime there was snow. When I was in Germany I always got up at 5:30 AM in the morning for cooking and prepare something for go to school at 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM. At the weekend I went to somewhere by train on Saturday morning such as: Frankfurt, Darmstadt to buy something and came back on afternoon. Some weekend I went to Mannheim to visit Lao peoples on Friday afternoon and came back on Sunday afternoon The organization of institute took me two times to visit Berlin for 5 days each time. I saw Germany is very developed and high technology in Europe.
I started study English in 2016 for Elementary class with Denise and then with Amelie, and now I study English with my German teacher Sandra in Lao-German Technical College, she is very kind and beautiful. I want to thank her very much to improve my English knowledge to communicate with foreigners and I can use English for my work.
Text by K. Gnommilavong
Photos by K. Gnommilavong, S. Uhlig, I. Martin
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