Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Ok, HELLO!!!!!! This entry is going to be so super long! I HAVE SO MANY INTERESTING THINGS TO SAY, just that i didn't have the time previously. Not that i have all the time in the world now cause i'm so busy BUT i feel relieved cause LEADERSHIP TRAINING CAMP (ltc) JUST ENDED! WHOOHOO.. so sad ok, we had LOADS of fun preparing for it.

So anyway, the holiday was practically packed, had many LTC meetings for the preparation of camp and all. Prefects camp was on the 15th to the 17th, SO FUN! Haha! I was the group leader of WATT, funny group names but meaningful! We had a lot of training sessions and all, BUT many games too!!! :) haha! On the 2nd day of prefects camp, we invited other schools over. I was in charge of SJI, and only a pathetic no. of 2 people came. haha! So, we again had many games going on, and in the night was the concert! Everyone had to put up an item! haha, you won't believe our sec 3 item. Previously BEFORE the camp we met like 2 times for 3 hours each to discuss about the dance, BUT we only got through the front part of one song. HAHA! The funniest thing is we changed song during the camp, wasier mah, and we cheographed and rehearsed it in maybe less than 2 hours? HAHA! Isn't that good or what? We used Spice Girls' "Spice up your life", Mrs Chen said she liked it! hsha! We met our mentees on the 3rd day, my mentee is Erica Lim from 2E! haha! Quite scary leh, Lou's sis. HAHA, but it's Ok! mmhmm, then camp like ended. It was really fun and tiring, i was never so b usy during the camp lah! and why? Cause everyone couldn't fit into their Prefects' polo tee! And i had to be in charge of that, then we found the mistake, last time they ordered Men's size so baggy baggy. this time we ordered woman's size! so very tight fitting. It's quite screwed, still settling it. THEN, we had a REALLY nice camp t-shirt designed by the events comm. There's this periodic table at the back and our names are in it..we were supposed to wear on the 2nd night but HORRORS OF HORRORS, someone suddenly discovered it had more than 3 colours, and we had to return back the shirt to make amendments.. sigh. school rule.

After prefects' camp i had a weeekend before LTC started. It was a BUSY BUSY weekend catching up on stuff and finalizing everything we had. Had worship prac RIGHT AFTER prefects' camp i was dead beat and irritated at someone. So anyway, the weekend was pure torture man, had to do up those LTC boards. Shall explain later.

Run with Perseverance
"Therefor, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. " [Hebrews 12:1]

That was our theme and theme verse of LTC!

Monday, which was 2 days ago, LTC started. I reached school at 6.30am and on the way to school kelly messaged and said it wa 6.45am! whatever lah! haahha, by that tiome i reached school already! So anywy, yup, went up early to paste the boards on the walls of the lecture theatre! So actually these boards are termed "Boards of encouragement", where each person had this paper personalized with her name and the theme verse on it, and every one else could write a word of encouragement in it. And because devotions comm proposed the idea we had to do it. I tell you it was SO tideous doing it.. and i wasn't exactly suppose to do everything but there was communication breakdown man. So anyway, me and Prilaa were student facilitators of group FILASo cool right the group names, i tell you we had SO MANY changes. First it was car brands, then we changed it to sports brands, then we changed it to sports people, and thankfully, finally they changed it back to sports brands man. Imagine cheering for your group going "Go Li Jia Wei, go Li Jia Wei" haha,originally that was my group name, but it's FILA now!we had training sessions from High Achievers. Coach Charmaine was HILARIUOS, i thought it was a GREAT training session! In the afternoon we had station games, and me and Kelly were in charge of the telematch. Unfortunately, it involved starch and water and to get back at us, student facilitators, who poured the starch over them, THEY DIRTIED US ALSO, and it was just really messy and horrible cause we as student facilitators do not bathe at the same time as student leaders. I was SO dirty, but didn't bathe cause had to get ready for the night games. So in my starch coated legs i had to put on my costume for the night game's murder mystery. It was quite a disgusting feeling when you can feel the starch has dried up and it's cracking. haah! We filmed a video for the murder mystery, gahahah, i thought it was quite funny! We actually had 2 filming sessions at my hoouse, utterly hilarious. Originally the doll wasn't supposed to be named Violet, BUT wan pin saw the doll sitting on my shelf and took and said "We can use this doll and it can be named Violet". From that time onwards we were freaked out by Violet, cause when you turn the knob it plays "it's a small world" and turns its head scarily. Brr. It's in my room now. night games were very HARD i heard, many couldn't figure out the clues. But oh wellz, it was quite fun playing the forensic scientist and giving factual information on the death of the girl. Ms kek was at my station with me and i had a good talk with her. haha. She was saying how time passes so fast and i should start thinking about my future, true. After that we had devotions, worship then group reflections. Oh, we had this group journal too, made by my comm (devotions) and log comm :) hahah! FILA was really a good group, they were so united and were open with feelings. wow, me and Prilaa were impressed, seriously. Student facilitators could only bathe at 11 something. We had meeting at the conference room at 12am to do evaluation and discuss about next day's programme. Guess what time we slept? 4 am. haha. During the meeting we ate and ate and ate, so FUN. we kept passing around food, evaluated about next day, had lame jokes by Ms Ho. This is the one thing that i will miss dearly from the camp cause you're not supposed to be eating in the conference room! !! haha! We had to pack for the hike the next day so i carried watermelons up with mr ng and prilaa and carried four 1.5L of water up too, i was practically doing weights. We slept at 4am, woke up at 6am. 2hours. We were dead beat.

I should move on to day 2 now. 6am had to go wash the level one toilet that was still fill of starch on the floor. Cleared up everything while the student leaders were doing 5BX. Had devotions and worship, followed by another training session. We were showed this video called "Brave Hearts". It was to illustrate the meaning of the power of a shared vision. It was so grusome and inspiring also. i should go watch. Training then ended.. while the student leaders went to eat lunch, we went to load the knapsacks we packed the previous night into ms Ho's car. Claire didn't know how to open Ms Ho's car boot with the rempote control, so she just pushed the key into the lock and what happend? THE ALARM STARTED TO SOUND! Me, Claire, and Rachel i think, WERE SO FREAKED OUT. We just stood there frozen with the alarm sirening in the background. LUCKILY, Ms Bong and Mrs Chen weren't far behind, so they knew how to operate the car, phew! haha. So we had to prepare our own knapsacks too, so we gobbled down our lunch and ran to the conference. I think many people were shocked when we said they were going to be hiking from Mac Ritchie all the way back to school. haha! So we made our way to Mac Ritchie in a bus, and we had a speed game there, to see who should leave the starting point first. MY GROUP LEFT FIRST! hahaha, and the knapsack wasn't closed properly, so we dropped the watermelon and it broke into half! hahaha! We kept a steady pace and was leading. One of the activities was to stop at a particular place to break open the watermelon and eat it! That's why breaking the melon at the start was actualkly a blessing in disguise. I was amazed how they all managed to use their hands and dig out the watermelon and finish it within 3 mins! When we student facilitators went on the hike trial 2 times, we finished it in quite a long time. Partly cause we were laughing and laughing and laughing and the teachers also joined in the fun to eat with their hands! hahaha! We lost our lead when we had a toilet break, haha, but itwas ok, and something unexpected happened. THE PIPE TO CROSS WAS BLOCKED CAUSE IT WAS DRIZZLING! haha, we were shocked! Just the last sat we went for a trial and they didn't block it! Everyone ended up stuck at that point so all the groups decided to work on their group flag. Brave soul Mr Ng sinked his feet into the mud to get us across, and with the help of some other teachers and student faciliatators too. From tthat moment onwards we stopped the competition and we bonded as one whole school and the only vision we had was to get everyone safely back to school! It was definitely heartening to see that. We still carried out most of the activities we planned during the hike and the hike really met it's objectives on how we must persevere. Winning is not coming in first, but rather finishing the race. :) We took a rather comfortable walk back to school and bonded a lot with our team mates. It was definitely a wonderful experience. haha! We actually went for this 10km hike 2 times befroe the actual thing to test out the distance and stuff. haha. It was really fun with all the 14 of us plus the teachers! There was once where we saw the monkeys mating, and it wasn't a pleasant sight! hahaha! I was really tired when i reached back to school, imagine walking 10km with only 2 hours of sleep! We bathed and had catered dinner. We served the teachers first, student leaders and finally ourselves. haha. we were so nice, even the teachers were impressed, they thought we went to rush for the food ourselves but actually we were serving the rest first. It was so not enough. The drink had to keep mixing and we all didn't know the ration of the lemon squash to water so we kept doing trial and error! hahah! After that we watched this really old disney movie "Cool Runnings". It really was an apt movie to watch cause it was really in line with our camp theme. The student facilitators sat on the flooe. Claire and prilaa resting their heads on my lap and prilaa's head kept sliding! hahah. All of us were so tired that most slept throughout the whole movie. I was tired that i unconciously dozed off in the midst of the movie for a short while but i got a jist of it. Thereafter the devotions comm was supposed to lead everyone in happy songs but i was definitely not up to it, so I spoke to Mrs Chen and Ms Kek, and they were so understanding! All i said was "Can we please don't sing happy songs tonight", they said "tired is it", i nodded and they nodded back! haha, but i think the tiredness was obviously written all over our faces. haha! One of my classmate came up to me and Kelly while we were warming ourselves outside , and she asked how we managed to look so awake in the morning despite only 2 hours of sleep. And i said, we couldn't show it, if not everyone will feel tired too. Yup. But for all the 14 of us student facilitators, we were tired, no doubt about it. We then had group reflections and reflactions as a whole LTC where the teachers shared their views. The student leaders then got to go to bed, while we had a meeting in the conference room at 12.15am. Mr Ng was so nice. Hw went out to buy noodles, carrot cake , milk and stuff for us to eat cause dinner was so little! Yup, evaluation on the day's program took place, we discussed and talked and evaluated group members, and slept at 3.30am. Earlier than the night before. I just realized it's not even night, we slept in the morning. We slept till 6.20, so about 3 hours of sleep. Can you imagine, throughout the 60 hours during the camp, the student faciliatatiors only had 5 hours of sleep man. haha!

Day 3. Today. We all were seriously drained but tried our very best to seem not. The conference room wasn't open, i went to look for mr ng in PE departmenrt, he wasn't there. Went down to home econs room, he was there but didn't have the key i wanted. Went up again to check if anyone unlocked the room. Don't have. I walked down to look for Mr Ng again, he said one of the campers had the key soi went to find. Shu acompanied me. Walked up, key couldn't unlock door. Walked down, looked for Ms Ho for the other key. Such a tiring morning. This was practically equivalent to 5BX. Had worship and devotion then our groups were designed our task for the next semester, and FILA got the most difficult project to do, cause it's something new. But we can do it! :) haha! Then we proceeded to do cleaning up, and we found out we had a lot of snacks left so we all split up the load and brought them home. Had prize presentation, FILA got MOST ENTHUSIASTIC award! whoohoo! We sang the theme song one last time together wiuth the actions. Still remember the time where we were sitting round the meeting table early this month and we out of the blue thought of these moves for the song. wow. And zoom. the camp is now over. SO SAD. We spent so much time preparing. It was REALLY an enriching experience. We had photo taking and the student facilitators took a photo too. I forgot to mention that Ms Ho was teacher i/c for me and prilaa's group, FILA! she rocks man! Had a short debrief after the whole thing ended. We gave all the teachers baloons with their names written on it and we gave Mrs Chen and Ms Ho a card. I really really really enjoyed myself a lot. I bet we all did. Haha, I'll definitely miss the late night or rather early morning conference room meetings syrrounded by food, and the fun times we had as student facilitators preparing for this camp, the funny and stupid things we do, the hikes we went on, the jokes we crack, the bond we had with the teachers and each other. It was really amazing. The teachers gave us this crayon smarties thing, and they said very touching stuff. I wonder if they actually say that to every student facilitator after LTC is over, but i think it was true, i mean they can't lie about these kind of things. hahaha. Ms Ho said we were inspiring and we touched lives and Mrs Chen also said we were amazing and all. When we all heard that, we all felt so .. touched, so accomplished, felt that the whole month spent on preparing this 3 day camp was not wasted. It was awesome. I really hope they enjoyed LTC as much as we did. Somethimes we really exeasperate them quite a bit! haha! Especially it's 14 of us against 7 of them.

We did the final packing up for another 45 mins and left for KAP. Had a nice lunch there with 5 other student facilitators. So so tired, but i just had to blog about this. LTC was great, and definitely a memorable one. :)

Crystal


crys the piano sounded @ 5:50 PM

-ThE EnD-