Whoo-ooooo-ooo-oooooooooo! I'm back from the K3 Roots and Shoots camp!! Left for Pulau Ubin on Saturday, stayed overnight then came back this Sunday afternoon... It was so very fun with all the kids!! Ah ha... Okay where shall we start? Ahh... Saturday...
Yep, Saturday woke up at 7am? It was too early for me to remember, packed some last-minute stuff into my bag, fed Nutseed 2 days worth of seeds, then I went to school for Greenlink cos Huimin wanted us to practise for the skit that we're supposed to be preparing for the kids at K3 camp... Well, I was half an hour late, and in the end we barely practised anything more than our lines... Didn't even manage a dry-run of the entire skit, so we turned to the spice garden beside the Oasis to water the plants and slack around. After that all of us went to Suntec City, cos Carrefour is promoting World Environment Day and I'm the i/c for our school volunteers. Met Perl Han finally for the first time, (Perl Han is not in Greenlink, but he's volunteering) and he's a nice guy... The rest went for lunch at the food court, while me and Perl Han went to Carrefour and got entertained by Mr Adventure who was juggling and magic tricking and stuffing his head into this huge balloon. Then Liyong joined us after that and we basically went around the whole Suntec City getting people to fill up questionaires on plastic bag usage. And in that process you learn how it hurts to be rejected, or slightly less hurting to be rejected politely, or happy when people stop and take time to fill in the questionaire. Around 2pm, the whole group of us except Liyong left Suntec to go to Changi Village Jetty, along the way out of Suntec we met Adeline and Fenella, went to meet Grant, Grace, Jerryl, Mindy and some other Green Volunteer Network (GVN) volunteers at Changi Village Foodcourt, then went over to the jetty to meet the Anderson Primary kids... Well, they're all Primary 6, in their school's green club, and there were 14 boys to ONE poor girl... Haha, Huimin was the ONLY girl from NJC who went for the camp anyway, so I guess it's pretty much "evened out"... Oh and this boy named Gary Toh was SOOO CUTE!! The moment I saw him I think I was telling everyone about him and how cute he looked and what a "pretty boy" he is... Yesh he's VERY CUTE... Okay enough, anyway we lugged all the equipment, supplies etc to the bumboats and zoomed off to Ubin... Once there we settled down, the kids went for some trail walk while the facilitators (that's us by the way...) and the GVN volunteers helped to set up all the tents for the kids, cleared the area and settled all our stuff down. When the kids came back we were split up into 3 groups, me and Jun Ying took Team Cheetah, and too bad Gary the cute boy was in Team whatever, Team Weird if I can recall correctly... Yup, we played games, and my group lost the first game which was to pass the hoola-hoops through our bodies, and the forfeit was to spell the word "DETERMINATION" with our butts. Yea, it ended up quite obscene... Then after throwing all our bags into the tents, we went for dinner at the eatery by the seaside, had loads of yummy food and Gary was sitting opposite me on the same table, so both of us ended up glancing/staring a lot at each other, even though I haven't spoken a word to him yet. Then Faith called me to ask about her computer and I got her envious of the fact that I'm in Ubin right now... Then Cheryn called me also and I told her about Gary also... Hee... After dinner we sat down in a circle at the campsite, used our torchlights as a "campfire" and played all the silly "campfire" games and sang all the silly "campfire" songs that Jerryl and Mindy were teaching us. Then Grant came along with the carbide lamp, impressed us all with the lamp but refused to tell us how it works... But oh boy the carbide lamp was enough to illuminate the entire "campfire" circle... More games/songs later we went on the nightwalk. First we saw the strangling figs, then walked into the Sensory Trail routes and deeper into the jungle and passed by all the mud holes with the mud lobsters, the fireflies, and lots of other greeery which I shaldn't bother to describe... We ended up back at the campsite, and it was barbeque time... While they were starting the fire, Grant was mixing yeast and fruit bits together to make bread, and when the charcoal was burning we roasted the bread and it was delicious... Somehow the salty taste mixed well with the raisin bits, and the hot roast just adds on to the taste. Yup, Jun Ying told me later that Grant is a great cook, and I don't think I doubt him... We mingled around with the kids, me and Perl Han felt sleepy and went to one of the empty tents to talk about stuff... Then I was talking to a lot of other kids also, oh AND GARY!! Yesh yesh, did I mention?? During the night walk at one of the head counts, Gary was asking "where's Guan You" cos I was supposed to stand in front of him during head counts... Ooh... He's so cute!! Yep, then there were these 2 girls also, they're siblings not older than primary 3 and their parents were the ones who opened the eatery business that we ate at for dinner. Yup, both the girls were very charming too, and they sort of remind me of my 6-year-old cousin...
The night sky was great. I spotted 3 shooting stars!! Yesh, I don't think I spotted more than 10 shooting stars in my whole life, so it was kinda fortunate for me to gaze up into the sky at the right time and see all 3 of them... Haha, Huimin was always a second too late... Yep, Jun Ying (he's in astronomy) showed us Scorpio and the Big Dipper, and at around 1am in the morning I fell asleep under the stars. Woke up later at around 3am or thereabouts, everyone else was sleeping except Huimin, Grace, Grant and Jerryl and a few other hyperactive kids who couldn't fall asleep... Oh Gary slept like a baby... Hee... I decided not to sleep anymore, so all of us who are awake sat around the barbeque pit and the carbide lamp to roast sweet potatoes and marshmallows. One by one all of them went to sleep, excep me who was still roasting loads of marshmallows and I simply loved the crisp marshmallow exterior but melted marshmallow interior... Then I sat on the chair stargazing in the chilly coldness of 5am in the morning, decided to sleep there and then after I got drowsy and when I woke up again at around 7am, it was freezing cold... Went to warm myself up at the still-hot barbeque pit, except that it was mostly ash and some ambers left... But it was still very hot cos the charcoal is still burning, so I roasted somemore marshmallows, brought this kid to the toilet, whining about the cold, looked at the sea and whined about the cold, walked back to the campsite whining about the cold, said good morning to everyone including Gary, positioned myself permanently in front of the barbeque pit and stop whining... The kids went for breakfast, while we stayed behind to pack up the tents. Ha... Me and Perl Han were trying to stuff everything, the base, the fly sheet etc into the bag, and the bag zip was threatening to give way until we slowly forced-zip bit by bit... Then it was our turn for breakfast, excellent lontong... Then more games which my Team Cheetah all got 3rd... Yesh, we got 3rd for all the games that we participated in right from first day, keeping in mind that there're only 3 teams in total...
Skit time. The Anderson kids went first, something about bringing awareness to the harms done to the environment, I'm not too sure, all I know is Gary was in it... Then it was our turn and we pranced around as trees, I was Baby Tree 1, then it was something about Great-Grandfather Tree bring chopped down and the trees crying out latex... We officially ended camp after that, took pictures, then Gary came over to say goodbye to all of us, AND ME... So sweet of him... And they went to cycle while all the facilitators and GVN volunteers went home...
And the funny thing is, I don't think I have any mosquito bites at all, but I've got millions of sandfly bites...
& Yoyo... 