Thursday, June 09, 2005 @10:31 PM
I am finally back to civilisation and technology on the 8th June. Surprisingly I don't miss my computer that much.. actually I find the internet boring. I found the nicer things of life.. like seriously.. I learnt a lot from this trip.. and this trip had been fabulous overall, though we were like counting down to the days we can go home.
Zach, Jo and I are in charge of 2 classes.. a grade 3 and a grade 5. They are kids that are so cute, so thoughtful, so fun-loving, so understanding, and so willing to learn. My first taste of teaching and they turned out relatively good. These kids are quite good in English vocab, but the problem is they can't pronounce those words. So, the three of us would make them repeat after us whenever we teach them new words. And in order to make sure they really understand, we played games with them. Games like spelling-on-the-board competition and "Zach says".. like "Zach says Jump!" .. this will make sure they can link those words with the meaning. I am quite sure these games are pretty useful as after a while, u hear kids saying "Come here" "Run!" "Okay!" "Walk!".. Mr lynn said before, u are a successful teacher if the kids start using simple English words, so I was pretty touched. I think my kids are far more quiet and sensible that meishi, shar, fi, eunice's kids.. they taught really young kids and these kids are so naughty.. there's this boy called juli that looked like a spanish-malay mixed. he got brown hair, making him look so cute. but he has this devilish look. he looks like a possessed boy. Seriously, he crawls on the floor like a bear, climbs the tree like a monkey, hides in the bush like a tiger. My goodness! we were always afraid we might just pop out from a tree or under the bus or something. And cos he is so scary, we came out with this story about his family background. his dad is an angmoh and tried to strangle his mum, which is called julie and she died after saying "Oh my god" (cos Juli love to say this line.. he'd cover his eyes and said "oh my god!").. so we guessed that's why he was called juli and why he loved doing that. Ah, btw, he is not as innocent as the other kids. he smacked his butt at us and spat at us, in particular Zach cos he is always playing/fighting with Juli. Oh.. the funny thing is Juli with 2 other young boys pulled Zach's berms down.. that was a kodak moment. You shd have seen Zach's face.. it was like O_O! I realized that Jo is a major pedo.. worse than me.. she's absolutely crazy over Juli and then this small grade 1 kid, Juni.. she has this thing for the Ju's...
Throughout the trip, I made friends with many J2s, but there are definitely ppl that I can't stand. I don't wanna talk about them since this is a public blog. But, well, they definitely make the trip less boring cos we have targets to bitch about and laugh about. And we realized even the guys thought the same as well. They are worse.. they come out with nicknames. But wellz. I guess the trip is more fun with them around. J2s are cool peeps. I got to know more mg seniors which I don't know in mg at all. After today's facilitation, we went out for a movie, Mr and Mrs Smith. Great show. I felt that these J2s are nice people and I know they don't really like disrespectful juniors. Luckily, I'm not disrespectful unlike some people. So, I got along pretty well with them. Oh, and the J1 guys thought me and Jo were J2s cos we mixed around too much with the J2s girls. So sad.. they were like "oh, aren't u in j2?" .. "erm.. no.. i'm in 1 ahr".. But there are still some people I didn't get to talk to much during the trip.. either cos they are in a different village or they just have their own cliques. But maybe when we are in school next time, we can say "hi"
I think this bintan trip is truly an experience. a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Hello.. what are the chances of you not using a toilet with flush system for 8 days? But i adapted to it very quickly and too well. On the last night, we were treated a stay at the resort. and when i used the toilet, for a moment, I forgot the existence of a flush.. i actually thought I still needed a pail of water. haha. this trip should only include building a library and english teaching. but as we all know, indo edu system, esp in a small island, like bintan, it is quite screwed. they didn't inform us that mon and tue is a school holiday as some kids are having exams. So in the end, we did the most unexpected thing ever. we painted the community hall and planted trees in the school compound. ok, it's a change.. not bad a change. at least i learnt to paint pretty well.
In bintan, we went for a few tours. 2 mangrove tours and a fishing tour. The night mangrove tour was exhilarating. This is the first time I see so many stars in the sky. They are all clustered and shining so brightly.. really damn super pretty. I even caught sight of a shooting star.. actually most of us saw it.. julius is quite poor thing.. whenever he did not look up, there's a shooting star, so as we were heading back, we kept his eyes sticked to the sky.. and the worst thing is, there is no more shooting star. In one of the facilitation, when asked abt the one thing he regret, he said "not keeping my head up at all times to look at shooting stars" funny chap.. during the night tour, we also saw many fireflies.. really pretty fireflies.. there are so many that u can just catch them and put them on your hands. Jo is such a bimbo.. she caught them and put them on her head so that her head looks pretty.. and we thought the fireflies actually landed on her head. our boatman is a really horny man with weird laughter. there's this j2 girl who caught his attention. so he goes like "meishi.. i caught this firefly for you" "meishi is my friend, i want to give this firefly to you" "when i visit singapore, meishi will bring me around right.." "meishi......" he said "meishi" so grossly.. he sounds super turned on.. the worst thing is when we go on the mangrove tour in the afternoon, he became or volunteered to be our guide.. eww.. there he goes again "meishi, can u see the snake" "meishi, this flower is for you" "meishi can u see the mangrove trees".. oh my freaky hell.. he's a weirdo..
alrite.. that's a pretty long wordy entry..