I'm back from camp! Not darker, surprisingly, but definitely fatter cos I've been eating 3 full meals in these 3 days. It was an adventure camp, which meant that there was a lot of physical activities involved. The kids enjoyed it, I can see, apart from a few problematic ones like both of the only 2 students I managed to send from my shool. Terrible... Anyway, from the point of view of the staff, the camp went very wrong cos the vendors did not give what we agreed upon - Programmes were different, time management was nil, screw-ups were frequent. Half the facilitators had no idea whatsoever knew what they were doing. Most of the facilitation, debriefing, motivation and team management fell into the hands of the staff. Not that we mind or were incompetent in that, it's just that when we engaged this adventure camp vendor we expected that the facilitators were experienced in running educational adventure camps for students and knew how to communicate the learning values to them.

Whatever it is, I guess the kids enjoyed it at the end of the day and that's probably one of the most important things. In fact, I have to admit I quite enjoyed the experience also, with rockwall-climbing, flying fox, captains ball (which my team asked me to join in to fill the numbers. Haha, bad idea... I didn't catch anything), scavengener hunts and a series of challenging obstacle courses that required brains and team effort. Of course, I can't deny that I was helped largely by a supportive team of colleagues, and a very cohesive group of students whom I was attached to. We were supposed to have 6 volunteers attached to each group as the group leader, aided with one staff, but because one volunteer dropped out at the last moment, one colleague and I were roped in to be the leaders of one group.

I'll miss these kids, those who were in my group. A lovely bunch. Best achievement I guess was that I could really see the bond among them growing, and the ability to think and act as a group became apparent as being among the best of all the other groups. Even the quieter ones in the group began to encourage one another during the games and activities. Why, they actually emerged champions in almost all the competitions during the camp, whether it was physical games or puttinhg up a skit for our grand finale, shy of one activity in which we as the staff cut short as our students were too tired.

I still dreaded the sleeping arrangement where we had to squeeze in with the kids cos sleep to me is an extremely private moment for me. Glad it's over on that aspect....

The other dreaded moment came when my 2 students gave my colleagues loads of disciplinary problems... sigh...

Anyhow, I'm back, alive and kicking and on leave today!