INSTRUCTORS (AND TEACHERS)! THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS CAMP SO ENJOYABLE FOR ALL OF US!
(ha, ha, ha, like they would even come here)
2006 SEC 3s ROCK! CAMP ROCK INSTRUCTORS PEBBLES! MISS CHONG STONE!
As you can see, I am feeling high!
Wednesday, 4 April
Came to school early in the morning, with all that luggage, gathered in our classes all over the hall. We wanted to know our groupings for the camp darn badly. Excitement was in the air. The groupings were finally put up and almost everyone rushed to the board. (sounds as if i'm narrating some story) So found out I was in group 4, with Hilary. My mortal! As well as my partner for the camp. This group consists of all the quiet and stone people. One doesn't talk at all, one cries easily.
The instructors came in to the hall, we were like "Wah so young..." I thought they were a bunch of cute weirdos. There was this introduction on stage, and they did a lot of funny things. From this intro, we could actually sense that the camp was going to be a crazy one. My group's instructor was Donovan. HANDSOME GEEK, says Joey. I think he's more on the cute than handsome side lor. Haha.. Had some time with the instructors, to make our flag and come up with some cheers. My group really stoned. No one was even making an attempt to suggest good cheers, interact like other groups... Don's attempt to make us talk and discuss ended up with playing whacko. We used his yucky shirt to hit :D
The small eyes instructor, Timothy led Major Group A in cheers. He's a funny guy.
Bused to MOE Jalan Bahtera. The sight of the high elements made us freak out. Scary. Had our lunch there, freaked out again when we looked up and saw the lizards on the ceiling. Thought it would drop into our plates, haha. The queue for food is always damn long, and you have to eat up anything they give you. No such thing as "I don't want vegetables". Of course la. What d'you expect? You think this is some hotel? Think again.
We were introduced to our other instructor, Lihui. She's very nice!
Lihui led us in the low elements. They were all team-building games, which makes the group more bonded as one. [Miss Chong was the teacher attatched to our group and she followed us around, btw] The toughest ones were the wall climbing and squeezing onto that small square platform. We had to smell each other's body odour, grab on to the sweaty shirts, step on foots, do lots of weird stuff to squeeze the whole group onto that thing. Succeeded :D From this, I learnt that every group member is important, every person counts. Every little bit of space on that thing is precious.
The wall climbing. Step, carry, push, pull.... Teamwork! The leaders, Shi Yun and Glynnis were really great. They take a lot of initiative to do things. And they led the group well. Good job, guys :)
I was a nice person. The rain was pouring and people were stuck at the toilet without umbrellas. Helpful and kind people like me, Joey, En Ling and Joanne went to rescue them. It's nice to see people happy that they can get sheltered to their huts. At least they appreciate it, not like some others Joey mentioned. People happy, you happy, everybody happy, PEACE. LOL!
Dinner brought screams from all over the canteen. Flies and lizards, mosquitos and a cat. Not forgetting a frog during debrief. Whatever, we still managed to eat in peace. Somebody once said that camps fatten you up by giving you a lot of food, haha..
RAIN. Our enemy. Because of RAIN, the night activity was replaced by mascots from the various groups. Most of them were not very nice ones, which kind of made the teachers mad. About the high belt and long skirt, the balloons which were put somewhere... Miss 'Gay'sha! That instructor was so funny. He and Jeremy. Gosh one look at it and you feel like puking and laughing and embarrased at the same time. I didn't know excatly how I felt. Instructors taught us the campfire songs. I like the titanic one. We shall sing it in class.
Group debriefs with instructors. Mine was under Hut 3. Hillary, as usual, screamed when she saw the frog a the grassy area. She never walked on the grass after that. LOL. Didn't write down the reflections thingy, I'm blogging it.
Was a good night, I slept through. It was a little hot at first. Warm. Other huts did not have that spotlight. Ours was on all night, so it attracted little friends. Yes, the flies, hahahas. En Ling couldn't sleep and was counting flies. Now the whole cohort knows she was counting flies. Temperature decreased and it became cold, the PL jacket is so comfortable. Yuhui promised to wake the whole hut up with her loud voice and alarm clock. Haha..
Thursday, 5 April
Woke up looking into Yuhui's face. Didn't even need her alarm clock la. We were supposed to wake up at 6.30am but got up half an hour earlier.
Devotion and singspiration. I love singspiration! :) Followed by yummy breakfast.
And then. Our fears. High elements!!! I wanted to try the walking on the log one, the stable log which was the easiest of all the elements there. No chance to try, too many people wanted that. Next one was the broken bridge, where we had to walk across the shaky planks. Lihui belayed us. Kar Mun fell halfway, and it was damn scary! Lihui almost flew up okay, if not for Hillary as anchorman. (in this case, woman) Then I was going up already and then they said CHANGE STATION. Wah lao I wanted to try that one lor!
So I ended up doing the rock wall aka rock climbing. That was scary. I couldn't climb, my shoe spoilt. Couldn't even get past the red line, only like a few fingers. Shabana did our group proud by touching the top! She's amazing. Glynnis fell as one of the rocks on the wall dropped off.
The challenge pole, Shabana did it again by grabbing the bar! This girl arh, I dunno how come she's so brave and can do so many things. Simply amazed by her character. Yeah and Miss Chong did a demo for us! She was shaking up there, then calmed down by taking deep breaths. I could see her mouth opening and closing :D
Before that, Clara Ying was stuck up there for like 1h 45min. She was paralysed, just sat there and didn't move. The darker-skinned instructor Timothy was there persuading her to get down. He was there with her for a long time too. Wow. When Clara finally jumped, she was crying away and people downstairs cheered to encourage her. So. If you think you're too scared to do something, don't do it because you don't want to lose face or just want to put on a brave front. Well that's wrong. Look at Clara.
Lunch was fantastic! Don's always serving rice :D He will put the rice in En Ling's small compartment in her plate and then the other instructors serving will look at it and show the weird face. Bully En Ling arh! Haha.. Hillary loves the 'fruits guy". Very cute meh? Lol.
Hmm. After lunch it was the zip line aka flying fox. We sat burning in the sun for a long time before getting the chance to fly down. I am officially redder now. Went up the abseiling (?)tower, the stairs was not scary at all, some people take a year to get up! Everything looked frightening from up there. Hillary took quite awhile to take off. Wasn't as scary as I thought. Just moved my legs away and zoom. Fun! Yuhui said it was a great way to relieve stress.
Abseiling. Scary cats like me stayed on the ground. My shoe spoilt hor. How to go down the wall? The left lane took a long time to come down, the instructor there gave them a super long briefing. the right side was much faster. Cheered for friends coming down from that wall.
Then our enemy came again. Stupid rain, took away our chance to go for kayaking!! I wanted to try that. Cumulonimbus clouds and convectional rain always takes away all our fun. So we practiced for the campfire item instead. Don, Lihui and Miss Chong were very engouraging. They also made us shout and scream like nobody's business. Lihui taught major group A the roti prata cheer. Woot, that was nice :)
Dinner, dinner, yum. Hungry. The food tasted better than usual. So much nicer! We wanted to take a group photo at the table but some were missing and our instructors were not there. Oh well.
Campire's burning in the dark dark night. Ooooh yeah! Yippee Yippee yeah!
We had a roaring good time singing songs, cheering, watching performances by every group. Mine screwed up. I totally forgot all the lyrics and actions. Some more standing at the front row. How embarrasing. Acted normal, lip sync, haha. The sea of yellow people freaked me out.
Noticed something. Fraddy always goes "PL OEI" whenever he takes over the mic.
We didn't win, but that's okay. It was the fun we had while preparing and performing the thing out. I actually cried when the instructors did their item for it. Like so touhing! Reality hit me as I realised that it was already the 2nd night, the last night at Jalan Bahtera. Last night fooling aroung with the instructors. Yes it was that saddening.
Debrief with Don and Lihui. They talked about the past two days, how we've growed to be more bonded together as a group (did they say that?) About our objective of the camp on the first day, which was to have fun. We did. They made it sound like a farewell thing, like they were going to die. Just 2 days and I feel that the instructors were so attatched to our group, like glue. I felt like tearing againg and asked Hillary, "can I cry?" Don heard that. Like whoops. Then he said don't cry, be happy, ..... But it's really very sad lor. Those memories... The times we had together as a group...
With Yuhui, Nisa and En Ling around, it was very hard to sleep. They talk about absolutely anything under the half moon and many stars. Anything. It was practically impossible to sleep with them around. Two keeps talking about rubbish and funny things. One keeps laughing non-stop. I didn't even get to do my personal reflection and QT. That night was nice to sleep. We slept without the lights, one of the bulb fused and the whole thing just died. Lights should never be connected in series. Miss Chong, Constance and Lihui came up a few times to check on the lights. Don reported the faluty lights. The day ended with a sleepy and energyless (-.-) atmosphere.
Lets give ourselves an adidas clap.
Today, 7 April
Woke up looking at Yuhui again. Just felt like lying down there, enjoying the last few minutes of lying in the hut. Washed up with Hillary and En Ling then went to pack up our things. Was so messy, the hut. Plastic bags, spoilt shoes, ...
Singspiration and devotion felt sad. Those songs we sang arh, made me want to cry again. Sec 3s were bonded together and sang as one voice. The song One Voice is nice. Mrs Chong, lead in devotion also say all the sad and serious things.
When the instructors took over the mic, they were like looking at out sad and sian faces, haha. "PL oei."
"oei."
"hey oei louder leh, PL OEI!"
"OEI!!"
Instructions were given for area cleaning. My group cleaned up the dirtiest toilet in the campsite. We just stepped in, and looked at the dustbin, "EWWWWWWWWWW!" It was overflowing like anything. Pads, shoes, slippers, panties, fork and spoon, more pads,.... Really gross. Be thankful that you weren't there okay. You'll just puke on the spot. So many people were having menses. We had to clear the overflowing dustbin, like it was totally yucky? Someone left a bra in the shower and I had to clear that. YUCKS YUCKS YUCKS. There were pads sticking at the shower area. PADS WITH BLOOD. PAD IN THE TOILET BOWL> PLASTIC BAG IN THE TOILET BOWL. BRA LEFT THERE. AND THE POOR GROUP 4 PEOPLE HAVE TO CLEAN UP AFTER YOU??! If you are guilty of any of the above, please la, don't ever do that again. It's very hard work for the cleaners. Hair was all over the place. Why do girls drop so much hair? We cleared the darn heavy bags of rubbish and cleaned up the place till it was like some 7-star hotel pls. Try doing that. Lihui said she was proud of us.
Next, everyone was seen walking around with markers, getting instructors to sign on their shirts. I only got a few. Was looking around for Donovan, this guy actually left at night without saying goodbye to our group! So he thinks he's very nice la?! We're his group people lor, never even say a proper bye bye. The debrief the night before also never say he's not going to be with us in the morning. Some of us were pretty upset, hello, we're short of one signature. Some more he's taking our group.
So the group photo was damn incomplete, without Don and Miss Chong (she disappeared. Still can see her in school anyway.) At least we still had Lihui. But no Don..?
Gathered at the MPH to say a final bye to the instructors and vice versa. Jeremy promised all of us ice-cream :D I think he's faking it. If he really buys us ice-cream, must come back personally and bring the whole bunch of instructors along. Then sec 3s will go mad until need to be admitted to Woodbridge hospital. Really wish that we can see them again.
Mr Thomson gave out prizes for the best campers and best group. None of them were from Major Group A. *Oh we were sad*
Then the instructors said a lot of things, "PL we love you!", I cried again. Tell me how not to? At first I managed to stop and then I couldn't take it and cried, again. It was a hard time for us, especially me. Wonder if anyone else ended up like me? Really cannot help it, the tears just flow like that. The more I try not to think of it, the more I can't control the tears.
INSTRUCTORS, WE LOVE YOU!!!
DONOVAN AND LIHUI, GROUP 4 (or rather, I) LOVES YOU TRUCKLOADS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DON DON DON DON DON DON!!
Some of the instructors got up the bus with us, they were going to take the bus at Serangoon. We could not get any contact number or email from them. Otherwise, n-o-p-a-y. nopay. No pay. But of course, the younger instructors have lots of other methods. I have Timothy's blog address and email, and Fraddy's email. A silent clap please :D
Into the bus we went, outside the bus the instructors stood. Some had another camp to run. Poor things. As the bus left, they waved to all of us. I almost cried again, this time I managed to control. The camp may be over, but those memories... would be stuck in our hearts for a damn long time. Perhaps forever. I'll make sure all the other sec 3s remember it for the rest of their lives. Sigh.. This camp really means a lot to me.
I slept throughout the journey back to PL. Pushing away all thoughts of missing the camp was no easy task. What else could I do? I was going to end up in tears again.
The sea of yellow girls, teachers and the few instructors came out of the bus and scattered all around. Girls said one final bye to the instructors and went their own ways. Having no idea where to go, I followed Joey and Liying out. We were going to eat prata, and stalked the instructors. In the end, Asher, Andrew and a female instructor had prata, milo dinosaur and Indian Rojak with us.
Heard them talk about a lot of things, some disputes among the instructors. Of course, they were humans. How to live in total peace? These we understand. Other things like why can't the camp be longer, we can't understand. I think they are fantastic. They can hide all these and help us make the camp fun, like nothing not so positive is happening among them. They did not let their disputes afftect how they run the camp. Okay. Talked and talked. We were the last ones in PL to spend extra time with the instructors. (Those who like Ash, you guys jealous?) He has long eyelashes, ...
Then the female instructor, instructor Andrew and Liying cabbed back. They lived in the same area. The other one took 136 with Joey and I. Saw Joelle and Rebecca, I hope they were not thinking out of the box. It's just bus with instructor Ash. He took the bus going in the wrong direction again. -.- Joey saw him in the 11x bus. Whoops.
So here I am, sitting in front of the computer. Blogging. My eyes hurt.
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