TRBC Youth Blog

(Updated!) Some people are sooooo demanding. Here is an accounting of how I spent/will spend this week, just to put this entire Children's Camp into the context of my life.

Sun 26 Nov 06 - Studying + Friend's wedding dinner
Mon 27 Nov 06 - Sick (mild food poisoning) + Studying + Exam at 6:30-9:30pm
Tue 28 Nov 06 - Children's Camp Day 1
Wed 29 Nov 06 - Children's Camp Day 2
Thus 30 Nov 06 - Children's Camp Day 3
Fri 1 Dec 06 - Children's Camp Day 4 (last day!)
Sat 2 Dec 06 - Soo Jin+Van's Wedding
Sun 3 Dec 06 - StanChart Run (10K)

This is the tail-end of my Oct/Nov craziness, but the work week from 4th Dec onwards is packed with back-dated appointments with people who wanted a piece of me but couldn't get it during my exam period.

Children's Enrichment Camp Day 1: 28 Nov 2006
Once again, I find myself in charge of the music station - I was involved in 2004, in charge in 2005 (last year), and again in charge this year (2006.) My lovely team this year comprise Beverly Tan, Puden Tsang, Huiyun, and Mandino Tan on P.A. Bev, Puden and Huiyun are amazing - they gave up Sunday after Sunday of lunches just to learn the actions for all the songs that we had to teach in the camp. How great is that? (And we have VIDEO FOOTAGE, all thanks to Miss.Chee.Vious.!

Same start to the camp like every year - everyone blur-blur dur-dur, some younger kids crying from the parent separation, the carpark dropoff area is a complete mess, parents coming into the music hall and blocking the entrance and then suddenly it's 830am already and we're all thinking ZOMG HOW COME THERE ARE SO MANY KIDS and IS THERE ENOUGH AIR IN THIS ROOM and IS IT TOO LATE TO BACK OUT and I HOPE THEY DON'T URINATE ON THE FLOOR and HOW ARE WE GONNA PULL THIS OFF???

And then we breathe, and then we pray, and it's okay.

For our station, it's just music, music, music all the way. Our schedule's tight and we always don't have enough manpower for this, but the kids dancing and singing is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS worth it, especially the pre-schoolers because they're just too adorable for words. Unfortunately, even the adorable-ness of the kids couldn't help Beverly clear her foggy head, so we had to send her off after lunch to visit the doctor and concuss on knockout drugs.

This was really bad for us because the first day is the only day we have two sessions with the kids - and this means we'll all be standing and dancing for nearly the whole day, stopping only for lunch and teatime. By the end of the day, waist-sour-back-pain doesn't even begin to cover how our lower limbs felt. But praise God! Everything went according to plan, although - and I am not kidding - one poor girl did urinate on the floor. Someone joked that my station was "too exciting liao."

One thing that really impresses me during the camp is the task of providing food for everyone in the camp. It's ALWAYS a military task to coordinate everything, although in the previous two years, it was a lady doing the work. This year, things definitely looked military-style, as Uncle Andrew took over from Aunty Anne in the cooking department. Because he's also in charge of logistics, stocks were ordered weeks in advance, and everything was delivered the weekend before the camp started. Boxes of the same size were put together, gunny sacks of rice were stored on top of boxes so that rats couldn't get to them, and physical barriers were put in place to prevent hungry mobs from overwhelming the kitchen staff.

A section was set aside for workers to eat and run, and Uncle Andrew was always around to remind us to eat more, and the daily menu was printed out and pasted in numerous locations to prevent parents and children from asking the same "what are we having for tea/lunch today?" question ten billion times over. How expert is that? And check out the amazing stacks of disposable cutlery we got - it's definitely NOT environmentally-friendly, but we tried the opposite last year - only to have it backfire on us as the kitchen staff were too stressed out by the washing up to concentrate on the cooking! Ergo, the decision to use styrofoam. We're still looking for solutions to this problem, and we welcome suggestions.

Debrief occurred at 6pm, and we all vamoosed by 6:30pm, tired and achy and having the theme song bouncing around in our brains.

Children's Enrichment Camp Day 2: 29 Nov 2006
The day started out with me not seeing the camp committee as we met to pray at 730am. Turns out that they were hiding in an obscure corner while I was wandering around church for 10 minutes. I got there just as the last "Amen" sounded, and after that it was a mad rush again to get to the music station to set everything up.

Praise & Worship, rest, teach, tea, rest, EXCURSION! This year, we went for two outings - the camp was split up into two groups, one to Changi Memorial Chapel and one to the Botanic Gardens. The groups would swap locations the next day, but yours truly was assigned to distribute tea at Changi Memorial Chapel.

Loading up the buses itself was a huge problem, because there were more butts than buttseats on each vehicle. Thankfully, the kids were squeezable, so we managed to hope on the two buses and head out to Changi. The bus took a wrong turn somewhere near the prisons, and we wound up staring at some airplanes, which woke everyone up and got us all quite excited. Too bad we were going to the chapel, and not touring Singapore Airline's hangars instead.

Changi Memorial Chapel is a very quiet, unassuming place. A dignified rememberance to the suffering that occurred during WWII and during the years of Japanese Occupation, it is situated in a pictureque little corner of Singapore, with an open-air bar/cafe at the side of its entrance.

(TBC, but I'll post this up first. Too sleepy to continue.)

It's a solemn place where you can go to remember the heros of the Japanese Occupation and see how Singapore fit in the greater context of WWII. Everything went well, although the rotating was kind of difficult due to the (1) massive number of children (2) the fact that we didn't really have a "holding area", and (3) the restriction that the kids couldn't make noise.

My duties were to distribute the water, cookies, and buns to the kids who were scheduled for tea break. The kids didn't seem very hungry, and the food/water boxes were so heavy that I decided to try and do something about it. I started selling kisses to Puden for 20 buns - all in jest, of course. But this soon spiralled out of control as I underestimated the love these kids have for their dear old 'Pooooden kor kor'. Kids really did start coming up to us and getting more buns from us, until we got quite alarmed that the kids would make themselves sick and vomit on the bus from the crazy force-feeding. One (rather fat) boy actually ate 6 buns and a lot of water, which pushed us over the edge from "amused" to "so cute" to "weird" to "ZOMG TAKE THAT BUN AWAY FROM HIS MOUTH BEFORE HE PUKES."

Herein lies the genesis of the Puden Fan Club, which is a post so hilarious that it deserves its own post, so hold tight while we all gather more incrimiating evidence.

Plus, I'm sleepy again.

Labels: cec2006