Closing Vespers

last night was the closing night of our staff training. its a tiring, but super fun and exciting experience. i've made all sorts of new ang moh friends and everyone seems glad that i'm here so thats a good thing.

we're all been through quite alot of rubbish together since my last blog...

from campouts, where in the morning you wake up to the sunrise in the sage field and find the whole top of your sleeping bag covered in frost(yes, its THAT cold in the summer!). the nights can get super cold and then it'd get darn hard to sleep...

from hikes, where we hiked to different parts of the snow mountain ranch area to see waterfalls, log cabins, and peaks of high hills(taller than bukit timah)...

from mountain biking, riding on mountain bike trails which can never be found in singapore and having to change gears every 20seconds is really not easy...

to doing all that rubbish team bonding(okie it was really fun) stuff...i mean we spent days and days doing that and alot of them are new that i've never tried before and are really tough and really need everyone to piah...

to learning to teach arts and craft and sports and games(the cluster that i'm in for all summer) as well as learning to handle the kids that will be coming to our camp on sunday. its really not easy and the lessons and trials are realistic and intense...

to learning that even americans from different states are different and everyone really has his or her own story to tell. and learning to tolerate different behaviours and learning to blend in even when i'm the obvious odd one out...

its truely a great and inspiring experience. the theme for this summer is actually 'to change the world' and somehow its been ingrained in all of us that we really do make a difference and everyone of us will contribute to doing so this summer. there's really too much to speak of, so i shan't be too long winded.

next week the kids come in liaoz. really looking forward to it. its gonna be helluva fun experience man! haha.

miss alot of things back home too. still another 4mths before i come back. wow.

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gotta try to log down all the little things as well over here so from now i'll just have a little column like this one under my blog to log them down...

meals

our meals are taken in the dining hall above the office. so you can imagine a two storey common room of sorts. the dining hall named chipeta is on top and the office and staff retreat named satanta is below. the dining hall can accommodate 200+ people and we eat on those 8-man foldable meal benches.

meals are cooked by the staff from snow mountain ranch(usually american food) and the regualrs are an argentinian, an indonesian and a korean lady, all managed by an american called anne.

like i said. meals are mainly all-american, consisting of a largely potato and salad and milk diet. in fact i drank so much milk last week that i was having a condition they term it here as 'wet-farts'. and yes, everyone here farts alot. and out loud. pooeey.

at meal times everyone must go through two doors where the day's hoppers(people who set the plates and all) will wait on each entrant with paper wipes. so each entrant dips his or her hand into a pail of sanitizer and then rips the wipes off the hopper's hand to dry his or her hands.

afterthat each table has a random rep to go take the food, everyone will say grace together, usually led by one of the older counsellors who would do a silly performance before that which never fails to crack me up.

then eat.

during eating time if anyone has his or her elbows on the table there's this elbow song thats supr funny and sabos the elbow culprit to do some kind of stupid forfeit like go touch the flagpole or something. heng i havent kenna.

when most people have finished eating, its time for announcements. now that word is a sensitive word. anyone who says it in the dining hall incites EVERYONE to sing this silly announcement song. hence no one says it when unnecessary. haha.

during announcements people announcement serious stuff, and silly stuff like "i'm the leader of the cuddly teddybears gang, come join me!" to the totally weird stuff like the guy who wrote a song the night before about his breakup with his girlfriend and sang it to the whole staff.

there's also the presentation of awards such as the blue clue which is given to some blur-fuck for something super clueless heor she did and everyone sings a song to humiliate him or her. heng haven't kenna that either.

also there's the u-rock award of which i was the first recipient...go read my previous blog for all that...

finally there's the closure of the meal which is called the square-off, also another sensitive word where everyone will sing a song, then someone will tell a silly story and we will all do a silly chant to celebrate the phrase of the day!

and thats a normal meal in camp chief ouray.