MY UNIVERSITY LIFE

All students usually refer to study from elementary school through high school. After finishing high school, students who continue to study at a higher level such as college or university are called Ni-Sit (in Khmer). Khmer people on these days call university.  
             The temple where I was staying in 2006-2010.

I was able to study at Tra Vinh University (TVU) by receiving a quota. During the exam, there were only students from the west. Tra Vinh University is called Sakalavidyalaya Tra Vinh for sort. It is a big state university in Southern Vietnam. I chose English as my major at the Faculty of Economics, Law & Foreign Languages.

I moved from my temple (Russey Srok) in Kompong Spean district to live in the other temples to study in Tra Vinh city. Kom Pong Spean District is about 40 kilometers from Tra Vinh. It takes about 45 minutes to get there by air-conditioned bus. Tra Vinh is the last one of all provinces in South of Vietnam. And Tra Vinh University is very large place.

I stayed in a monk’s temple with many monks and other older students. There were five monks in my room. The Temple where I stayed was called Bodhisalaraja Kompong. It was the biggest temple in my province. And it is in the center of Tra Vinh city. We had to study hard in temple and everybody shared the same answers of homework that we got from University. This temple was convenient because it was next to University and nearly the way walk to my faculty of.

At the beginning of the semester, there was a newcomer welcome party. Older students would test the effort and patience of the younger students. They taught some students who are my classmates to sing cheer song, from a line, run around the field and do anything they wanted. But, I could not join with them in that time. Because I am a monk, I thought they felt happily rather than.

For students at university, there were many sports competition between the faculties. The new students would sing cheer songs to encourage the athletes from their faculties. At that time, there were fifteen faculties altogether. The strongest faculty was the Faculty of Education because they had the most students and they had the Department of Physical Education. My faculty usually came in fourth or fifth.

After annual sports event within the university, there would be the University Games during the break between semesters on October. This was a competition between universities all over the country. In this time, I only brief some activities at University you know clearly and I finish it now.

After three years of Tra Vinh University, I received a letter from a monk, he is my friend, when I was young and went to school each other. He advised me to continue studying higher level in Thailand. So, I chose to study in Thailand after finished my education in Tra Vinh University still nowadays.