Last weekend, LEO Club organized its annual Children Camp event. Boy, was it tiring or what. I need to go to meetings and practice some group dances the week beforehand. Even worse, the night before the big day, we all stay up so late to do last minute work till I overslept the next day.
During one of our preparation nights, this is an orientation for the facilitators to get to know each other.
Here, Julia is still trying to teach us the morale dance for the camp.
As a facilitator, we are all supposed to gather together at 8am sharp on the big day. But sleepyhead me went on and sleep past the 8 am even though my alarm clock has been ringing for more than 1 hour. Sigh, after brushing my teeth, I went running to the Sports Hall with a slice of bread as breakfast. I will regret this extremely light breakfast afterwards.
By 9 something, the kids start to roll in. Since they were only a handful at a time, I go on and talked with the closest one to me. Two boys, younger one is very chubby and outgoing while the older one is a bit quiet. It is nice to talk with them. Then, I found out, they are cousins. Not only that, we then bring them together with another group and found out that there are 3 pair of cousins out of the six children we are talking to. It means, every two child there are related by blood.
The first pair of boys I talked to. The ones behind us are just extras and came in just for the picture.
After that, a big group of children arrived. They are from Rumah Ti-Ratana. Hence, a committee come and break up our merry group, asking some of the facilitators, including me to entertain the newly arrived children.
I went to the registration desk and they assign me with three siblings. Considering my quiet and passive personality, I hope that I won’t bored them to death. Luckily, two other facilitator decided to join in the fun and they also talked them as well. Overall, it is very entertaining with them and I wanted to extend the time I spend with them but then again, we need to separate because the opening ceremony is about to start.
The three siblings under my care. Luckily, these two charming ladies kepo in and help me.
Trust Dr. Sia to be late for the opening ceremony and thus, forcing the committees to stall for time punctual for events like this and to officiate the ceremony in a sweaty sportswear tasteful costume. In fact, Dr. Sia has such a joyful face at the sight of meeting the children. After giving a small speech along with the INTIMA Exco, they quickly exit the building.
Now, I was assign to Group I with three other facilitators – Gary “Superman”, Shirley and Iris. The first two facilitators are superb. They juggle betweens their duties as facilitators as well as being committees.
After the opening ceremony is ice breaking session where the facilitators get to know with the children. Each child is supposed to received part of a heart shape when they registered. This pieces are then matched together to form a heart. Unfortunately, some of the children decided that it is good to tear up the pieces to give to their friends. Since each group’s heart is of different color, they exchanged teared up pieces with their own gang to create a colorful collage. Sigh, no matter how many times we tried to piece them up together, but it was to no avail. So, we just quickly pasted up everything and hope someone can identified that it is a heart shape use or genius and figure the shape out.
And we are supposed to think of a group name and group slogan by then. Since we are running out of time, we simply chose one of the names nominated out. Sadly, democracy did not work, and the name “I love you” group is formed. Don’t even let me started on the slogan. I will let your imagination figured out how Group I Love You slogan turns out. We then have to go on stage and cheered out the slogan for everyone else to hear again.
Next, we have lunch (not really full, must sneak out to buy additional lunch) and some indoor games. Just what where they thinking. Some of the games are fine and dandy but some, I was so scared that the children, especially the younger ones will get hurt in them.
This is another group. They seem to be happy playing dodgeball. But, I fear my little young ones on the receiving ends of it.
Still, everything was not that bad lah. The facilitators can also participate in some of the games.
After games and games and games, they all had games again in the swimming pool! (Can’t they think of anything else to entertain the kids?). One of my children, yes, my children 
cannot swim and I piggyback him all over the pool, splashing water at other people and trying to escape when they splashed back at me.
After this is the poolside games. Frankly, I didn’t enjoy it much because my group keep on losing (what do you expect since most of my group members belong to the younger age group) and one of them almost fainted during the games!
Ah! Water balloons!
My little group “I love you”. Don’t know what I am looking at that time.
Then, it is bath time. Gary, my head facilitator and I bring the boys to the bathroom to bathe. Since he literally didn’t sleep in the past 24 hours, I let him catch some shut eyes by the youngest group member while I look after the other two, trying to search for an empty bathroom for them to shower.
Then, it’s dinner time (also not satisfying) but for kids, enough lah. After dinner is Treasure Hunt. There, we are supposed to go to few stations according to a map and solved the games there. The first station is about finding recyclable waste hidden around the BBQ pit in the dark. Were they good or what, my group managed to find stuff more then what is hidden by the committees. They found beer bottles, cereal boxes and even bring in used tissues as recyclable stuff. Wah, so creative. In fact, one of the older children, Carol, told me that this is not a game at all. It is our way to trick them into cleaning up the places for us . In fact, I had something of the same idea too. A few stations where not that eventful until we reached the folding clothes station. There, the children are supposed to fold the clothes in the quick Japanese style. Wow, May Chee (did I get the spelling correct?) was smiling with glee at this. She wasn’t kidding, she is so used to it that she folded up all the dirty piles of clothes in a jiffy.
But due to some unforeseen incidents, Group “I Love You” still ended up being in the last place.
By that time (around 10 pm), the committee show the movie “Ice Age 2″ but the kids don’t want and replaced it by “Waterhorse”. So, while they were munching on snacks and drinking Milo watching the movie, I went to help the committees moved down the mattresses and laid them into position. We are going to have an en mass sleepover tonight.
This child is really lucky. His name is Teh Bin Kit (less I forget about his name) and his facilitator is Mathew (the one wearing red). He cares so much about his child. Bin Kit is 8 years old and look really frail. So, his facilitator decided to share a bed with me so that he can be beside him and look after him. Girls, if you need a potential husband candidate, Mathew is a wise choice.
While we are all asleep, guess what the committees are doing? Some have to stay up all night to make sure the security of the children.
And that concludes Day 1.
). Unfortunately, for all our gargantuan effort went down the drain when other participants with ‘guan xi’ of their own rise up to the occasion and snatch the popularity contest from right below our fingertips.
