Reminiscence.

I just realised that I should talk about the Sec 3 Adventure Camp before I forget all about it.

Well, the camp started on the 2nd of September. Way before the camp I had been dreading it, but I managed to deal with those feelings of dread by fooling myself into believing the camp as a form of field agent pre-training (yes, the result of watching too much "Alias"). That loosened my dread a lot more and I felt a lot better. That day of the camp also happened to be my violin exam, so I didn't go to school in the morning at 0730 hrs. I'd say the exam went ok - though I had to repeat a few scales (eeps). I hope I passed.

After I came out from the exam room, my mom told me that Mr. See (my form teacher) had given her a call and told her that the class hadn't left school yet and that if I could rush there in time I could go to the Jalan Bahtera campsite with the rest of the class. That's what we did - but before that we popped over to King Albert Park's Cold Storage to get a box of Panadol just in case.

So I reached school and realised there that I wasn't supposed to bring any sweets. Luckily my class loved sweets (loved them too much in fact) and they were gone within seconds.

The bus came and everyone just bundled on. We sang and sang and sang and generally made a lot of noise on the way there (in my opinion, it was a good way of hyping ourselves up for what was coming up next).

It took about 45 minutes to an hour to get to the campsite. Jalan Bahtera's really really far away apparently and there was practically not a single living soul in sight (except for us) in a 1-km radius around the campsite. When we got to the campsite we assembled in the carpark to be directed to our respective groups.

wOOt! I was dispatched to Group Nine (actually, the grouping was done earlier, before the camp), and our group name was Kit (from "Kit-Kat" - yes, there WAS another group called "Kat", which would be our partner group). The atmosphere was kind of quiet at first since no one really knew anyone (I did know Cherrylene, and Franz too). I tried to start the ball rolling by asking everyone for comments and all that, but for some strange reason I got greeted by a haunting silence.

Eeps. So much for trying to be enthusiastic.

Luckily, things managed to loosen themselves up a bit (which proves the point that humans, when it comes to such things, are actually rather helpless, as I can attest to it). We got along more easily, and managed to keep together as a group.

Our first activity was the Challenge Rope Course. I've never seen an obstacle course at such a height before. I didn't manage to go through the CRC though since there wasn't enough time. Some of the others who did try were screaming their way up and screaming their way down.

The next was Rock Climbing. I mananged to give this a try and I must say, it's not as difficult as I expected it to be. I was expecting myself to be either stuck halfway or left suspended in mid-air, but surprise surprise - I got to the top with much ease (although getting down was a little more difficult and I ended up with a bruised knee). It was really fun but quite tiring, and I didn't go a second time.

Finally, there was Abseiling - or walking down a wall from a tall building. This activity was done from a tower about three storeys in height. This activity looked really cool (though rather slow) because it reminded me of the way the agents escaped from tall buildings (excluding Irina, who does it semi-bungee style). It looked difficult and was supposed to be very tiring (as many people told me) but when I tried it, I realised it wasn't that tiring at all. The hard part was keeping the body back and away from the wall - I had this habit of bending upwards. Keeping the body down as essential to keeping the legs on the wall. Whenever I tried, or subconsciously straightened myself up, my legs would lose their grip on the wall and I would just sail forward and swing into the wall (ouch). I mananged to get to the bottom safely and swiftly and I must say, it was really fun.

Skip skip skip all the usual stuff that goes on during a camp and we come to the next day (I didn't mention the Night Hike, did I? Right now I have no idea how to talk about it, so I'll leave it for now). Our first activity in the morning was - *shock* - the Land/Sea Expedition. Yes, the Land/Sea Expedition. I dreaded the Land Expedition because I heard from another group who had gone through it the day before that they had to go knee-deep into a mud pool. I also dreaded the Sea Expedition (which would be Kayaking) because I wasn't a good swimmer, or rather, could hardly swim at all.

The Land Expedition reminded me of an orienteering exercise - we were given clue cards with either bearings and directions or letters and numbers which represented something that could point us in the correct direction. Some examples of the clues include "Bearing: 100 degrees; Distance: 1km", "B04" (which actually referred to a bus-stop - bus-stops in Singapore have letters and numbers assigned to them, apparently), and "165 372 M.G.R." (i.e. grid reference). We were given maps to assist us in looking for these places. The bus-stop, however, wasn't marked on the map but luckily enough we were resting at a bus-stop when we were given the "B04" clue. The bus-stop we were at happened to be "B07" (or something close) and just down the road was another bus-stop saying "B06". From there we figured out that "B04" had to be somewhere down the road.

We managed to get to the third or fourth station and the trainer decided that due to time constraints we should be going straight to the mud track instead (eeps). We were like,"Oh dear!" and all that, but we followed the trainer anyway. We retraced our steps back to somewhere along the road that led out of the Jalan Bahtera campsite towards Lim Chu Kang Road. It was just a normal trail through the grass at first, but we eventually got to a point where the mud levels started to increase. We waited somewhere along the trail for the rest of the groups and when they arrived, moved off towards a slope which led to a wide dirt clearing. We climbed down the slope carefully, supporting each other and eventually managed to get to the bottom.

We finally got to the mud pool. The trainers joked that they were treating us to a free spa and that the mud was really good for our skin. They brought us to the mud pool (which really was knee-deep!) and I must say, it was...muddy, for the lack of a better word. Stepping into the pool our shoes sunk really fast into the loose mud and we sunk downwards as though we had stepped into quicksand.

The trainers made us sit and lie down in the mud - my EL tee was totally ruined (*sobs* - an injustice I had made towards the EDC!) and my shoes were mud-covered. Luckily I wore PE shorts and the mud didn't get into those. There were tadpoles in the mud pool, many of the others claimed, but I couldn't really see those for myself (I wouldn't want to, actually).

When we got out of the pool, we were absolutely filthy. Mud was all over my back and all over my skin. It felt weird to walk since my shoes kept squishing with muddy water. I was so glad that my shoes were made mostly out of canvas - this meant that the mud didn't stick and my shoes were quite clean within seconds of having gotten out of the mud pool.

We went for kayaking next. The buoyancy test was freaky - I couldn't maintain my balance in the water and had to grab onto poor Franz and another person next to me to keep steady. When I got onto a kayak with Franz I was wondering how I should paddle and hoping that nothing would go wrong.

It was a really sunny day - I got a tan on my legs that day. The kayak floated kind of unsteadily, bobbing up and down in the water. I couldn't really keep up with Franz' paddling, but the kayak moved quite smoothly through the water nonetheless. The feeling of the sea breeze was quite cooling.

Eeps, dad's calling me to go out. I think I'd better stop here. Next entry coming up soon!