Haha this pic has a few things. The kids having fun trying to squeeze onto the newspaper while holding onto one another to keep balance. Yongle walking around..having fun? And the person in the obs shirt looking pissed haha, relax relax!

CIP at cranberry canberra primary today with wan jing, yongle and yixin. Wan jing, yongle and I met at marsiling mrt at 8am as vijoo told us too. Then we waited 15mins. All the while we were talking about how our parents all told us that the school is like damn near to sembawang mrt and wondering if we had heard wrongly but wan jing and I remembered asking vijoo repeatedly and him still telling us that it's marsiling. Then all of a sudden he called me to ask where we were and told us to go to sembawang wth o.o but yixin wasn't there yet so we waited for her, then we went off first. Very hard to come up with excuses lol.

Yongle super funny

Me: vijoo this is my friend yongle
Vijoo: hi, sorry what's your name again?
Yongle: good morning

That's not my name o.o

Everything started half an hour late so we cancelled first activity. They couldn't really cooperate at the start. For human knot we had to restart or patch people in because they kept letting go and running off to fight with one another.

When they fight they seriously..fight, see them kick here punch there like want to kill each other. Then there's this small boy boy called darren who is not me who gets super pissed off and starts having murderous intent whenever he is provoked. Even when he's not he's screaming every single sentence. Show's that name does not determine character o.o

Then there's this act cool one called jing kang or something. Everything also say whatever and super gangster. He's really like a gangster shrunk down. Okay that was how it was like at the start. He will like sit out and act cool and say everything is lame and childish. I shall just refer to him as acb, act cool boy.

Bryan was one we were told had adhd. If you dunno what it is too bad heh. Anyway they had name tags and we were warned that he had adhd and was super hard to handle and everything, so at the start we were like looking for him, then I saw one small innocent looking kid, written on his name tag was byan boh. Then I whispered to wan jing, eh the one with adhd is bryan boh right, then she was like WHERE and I pointed him out, she couldn't believe it either.

Break time, wan jing was being ano and not eating and claiming she will eat lunch. The boys were taking plastic bags and doing the exploding thing. Screaming and shouting even as they were eating.

Next was the trust walk. It was tough enough getting them to put on the blindfolds, then getting them to stay in the line when they were exploring their new I-cannot-see world by walking around aimlessly. So we brought them around and it kind of defeated the purpose of the whole activity because only the last 4 people or so were passing the message that there were obstacles.

But during trust walk we really saw the adhd thing. Quite scary, when provoked he really goes into a fury and starts punching/whacking non stop. Took awhile for him to calm down, and you don't want to go near him when he's pissed.

After that was amazing race which we planned 1 and a half hours for. Wan jing and yongle took the more passive group while yixin and I took the super hyper group. Somehow during the amazing race, the act cool boy started showing his leadership instead of just being so act cool. It was terrible because all of them were screaming and shouting and blaming each other which resulted in them taking a much longer time. But the last part was more heartwarming because bryan, whom I presume is the youngest of the group, was the only one who spoke nicely to one of the team members who just got shouted at and didn't want to play anymore. Somehow him being the youngest didn't stop him from being sensible and emphatising with others. As usual darren was shouting and screaming at every single thing. The whole thing took only 45 mins so we played zhong ji mi ma.

There was a short time where we let them play with the tennis balls and they didn't want to stop and kept trying to snatch the tennis balls from us so I had to hold it high up. And that not me darren was desperately trying to pull my arm down and suddenly I felt a very strong tug and I was wondering how come he was so strong but I realised I was actually lifting him up o.o and he was hanging there like some koala

Lunch was finally a break but only yongle finished his food. Wan jing ano-ed again lol. They finished lunch like super quick when we planned one hour for it. So 3 of us just sat in the cateen to enjoy peace and the sound of rain while yongle ran off to don't know where. All of a sudden the act cool boy came with a tennis ball(they seem to have obsession with tennis balls we brought) and started throwing it at the walls around us. Then bryan came and he started throwing it at me for fun. He missed the first two times and I caught it after that, but then I gave it back to him and he threw it at my shoulder.

The 3 of us were sitting on those metal tops of the canteen stalls, somewhere we never thought we would ever find ourselves in a primary school. Then bryan came and he pulled my arm and actually dragged me off the metal top without me doing anything. He wanted to talk to me by suggesting games and he's kind of persistent because he said the same thing like 5 times. Then i went back to sit and he came and dragged me off to ask about the same thing again lol. Kind of cute talking to him because I have to squat down and he squatted down too.

We played the newspaper game next which was kind of a disaster because they were having fun tearing up all the newspapers. After a few slightly successful attempts at playing we played double whacko instead. Quite fun. Except that the guy behind me always never says anything, and one of them kept trying to peel the letters and numbers off my part tee. The highlight was yongle shouting SIMON SIMON SIMON, the whacker becoming stunned, and yongle realising that the guy is called martin. Simon ≠ martin

Reverse hide and seek was next. Instead of everyone hiding and one person finding, one person hide and the rest try to find. Once they find they're supposed to hide together. Yongle went to hide with the guy for safety reasons. After 20mins or so we still couldn't find them but we got a tip off that they were in a classroom, so we searched all and couldn't find them. Then at the last classroom. I went in, stared straight, then heard wan jing laughing, turned around and saw yongle and the guy hiding there lol. Yixin went in and screamed because yongle poked his head out, but somehow no one heard it. After 40mins still nothing. So we sat inside that classroom but a few people still came in and couldn't find them. Quite amusing. We had to end it with only 2 people managing to find them lol.

Prize presentation was more of them snatching the goody bags away and just running off. A few of them at least waved goodbye to us before they left. But we saw bryan crying because of some other people provoking him. He became not so innocent in the end when he was digging his nose and trying to clean it on us, ew. Then debrief was mostly talking about the experience.

I guess it took awhile to get their respect, be it as friends or as facilitators, sort of have to give them respect whether they deserve it or not before they respect you too. Bonded with quite a few like bryan even though the last part was o.o withdrawal symptoms haha.

I think we did a good job today. According to vijoo and diana, other volunteers who took this group of kids gave up halfway because they couldn't cooperate since this is like one of the most difficult group of kids with anger issues. But we were patient throughout. So good job everyone =)

Thanks to yongle and yixin for coming down to help out.

Thank you too wan jing, couldn't have planned this whole thing and made it a success without you =)




darren