December!

Time passes fast. It’s now the final month of the year (in a blink of an eye), before I know it, I’m at home again looking at my dear warmy room and sitting down quietly thinking of what I’ve done throughout the year. It’s as though I didn’t do anything before this until I looked at the pictures taken. Terengganu Melaka trip, CC trip, Perak trip, all kinds of outings, Port Dickson camp, Connexion friends, stupid photos of Teslians, Kuala Selangor camp, etc, (forget about the first semester..) all trigger the memories in my mind.

Now what fill my mind are the faces, laughters and screamings of Tanjong Karang children. When I go out, I’ll compare the children I had fun with at Tanjong Karang with the kids I see eating pizza hut or carrying a big expensive toy car. When I saw nice mountain bikes in KL I thought of the old lousy bikes the kids ride on at TK, they even teach you how to ride it properly, in afraid that you’ll fall since the bike’s not in a good shape. Others say it’s the effects of five days living among the children, so far everyone’s thinking about them, cute and naughty. Give me a week, and I’ll think about something else then.

I struggled to fight the urge to come back home after exam and went to Kuala Selangor children camp. Right after psychology exam (killer paper?), I went to a two-day-training for the camp (after looking at my coursemates fleeing to Mid Valley right after exam). Training means start all your unfinished or un-started work. For me it’s un-started work, so I made up the complete camp account and 5-day English teaching syllabus for 2 levels over the night. @.@ Luckily Xin Hui was around so I could use her laptop, my beloved laptop was long dead sadly.

On Sunday we reached there after one-half hours car ride from PJ, the place’s nicer than I thought. I think I prefer the TK than Pasir Penampang, the former’s a “kelapa sawit” village and the latter’s “fish” village. We cleaned two halls that we’re going to use, one hall’s old and raggy and we’re chasing away the spiders off their habitat by sweeping away the mass of spider webs. The other hall’s new and cleaner and we’re also chasing away another type of animal, mice (one of the kids’ t-shirt writes “mouses” =P). There’re 15 of us and 11 stayed in host families’ house. My host family has an old couple and their grandsons, they’re very nice and the kids are cute and they joined the camp too. Like ‘em very much.

(the newer mice-inhibited hall, the main centre of our children camp)

(the coffee shop we went three times, famous for mian fen gao...)

Over the five days started from Monday, we had the camp from nine to five. There’re English teaching, singing and games, craft, story telling and talent night practice. I was in charged with level 1 class which has kids from primary 1 to primary 3. The kids were noisy (X infinity). People said I was steady to survive in such noisy class. I thought they’re just my little brother (X 28). The boys behind never stopped talking, the girls in front never stopped kepo-ing.

“Teacher, look at XXX.”
“Teacher, why XXX”
“Teacher, this that XXX”
“Teacher, blablabla…”
“Yes”
“Ya”
“I know”
“It’s none of your business, do your own work…”

Then five days of teaching passes.

Two of the afternoon we had crafts and story telling. Wei Yin’s in charged of crafts session and haha it’s so cute looking at her shouting at the kids.

“Shut up and look at me!”
“Do after I tell you what to do!!!”

I’m very impressed with the creativity of the kids. Most of them are good drawer. They are so playful and talkative but many of them when it came to drawing and designing, they’re pro (I can’t draw better).

I gave my first karaoke to the village on Monday night when there was a karaoke session. We were told to start off the karaoke session since the villagers were too shy to sign up to sing. So li jye and me sang, it was hilarious I didn’t know what expression to give on stage. After that others ask “why you sing so “small voice’ de?”

“Got meh?” Gee….

The station games on Tuesday draws the kids crazy, but I think the group leader suffers more, (which was me and other 5 comrades), one kid is three of the adults, they ran like hell, and I was lagging behind, chasing my group, shouting at them especially the kid group leader to look after her group, apparently she never listen so I kept shouting and running for two and a half hours. Thank God my group was ok until the end, nobody was hurt and we got number 3! ^ ^

Went to watch Firefly on Thursday night, it was like a bunch of flicking light bulb hanging around the trees. Only that they were not light bulbs. It's pretty although some said it's not worth paying rm15 for it.

Talent show and the closing ceremony on Friday night was awesome. It paid off seeing all the kids working for number 1 on stage, singing and dancing to the songs. My group did “kuai le tian tang” and I was shocked at first when they almost learnt the entire song and dance movements on the first day. “What am I going to teach for the rest 4 days?”, I thought. So we brushed up the movements, the kids were very creative as they came out with all kinds of ideas as the dance movements, two kids became rock guitarist in the middle of the song playing air guitar, the kids requested to draw suns as props. I was glad to have such a nice group, (I see some other groups were not as cooperative), my group was quite obedient, I used less shouting compared to other group leaders =D They’re like angels performing on stage. The gladness at that time was beyond description. In the end we got number 3, we were overjoyed.


(we walked to the centre from our host family every morning, it's only 5 minutes walk. the crowd get bigger and bigger from day to day, with more and more kids joining us.)

The closing ceremony ended with a number of kids and some of the teachers crying, hoping the camp wouldn’t end. I really miss the kids and the village. There’re less cars, less noise, less pollution, more bikes and more smiles. You can ride bicycle like in the middle of the (small) road and no need to be scared of passing cars (basically the villagers don’t use cars unless they go out from the village). The once-in-a-week pasar petang was only one-tenth of SS2 pasar malam. There’re small prawns in almost every dishes. Barley drinks there’s only 60 cents. The most expensive noodle sold was rm3.50. When I went back to PJ, at once I detest the busy rustle place, hoping I was still in the peaceful village with cute kids and nice people. Sigh~


(One of the kids in my group, jian hao, who kept calling us after we left the village.)

(a few of my group members)

(level 1 kids artwork)

(level 2 kids artwork)

(village main gate)

(sekinchan paddy field, beautiful)

(Darius became out waiter. On the last day we went to sekinchan to look at the paddy field and had seafood breakfast. The seafood was really cheap man, eight dishes, with two dishes of vegetables and six dishes of fresh seafood only cost rm167.50, fed 11 hungry people.)

From the first day we went there with the villagers look suspiciously on us until the last day when we were asked "when's your next time coming back?", thank the Lord for His guidance and providence. ^ ^