Sunday, 16 August 2009

• Summer camp is OVER

  Summer camp is finally over and I'm so glad about it.  As some of you might know, I was helping my mother out with her "summer camps" practically every summer.  Basically, kids come over to my place and we do some art, craft, little bit of writing and some games with them.  They are all really young, from 5 to the eldest which would be around 10.
  
  
  
  Since they are so young, staying over at my mother's place could be slightly overwhelming.  They really miss their parents, only a couple do not seem all that bothered to call their parents every day.  It was quite interesting to see how some of them, albeit are seemingly tough kids, kept ringing their mothers and nagging about missing them.  Some of the...  well, one of the really tough kids, whom we call little John, cried an awful lot and wanted to go home because he missed his dear mother a lot.  Yet, in the end, he was consistently asking my mother whether or not he could come to my place 4 times a week since my mother no longer works in the primary school.
  
  
  
  There were loads of funny moments.  To begin with, both groups of children (we had 2 sets of kids in the 2 different weeks of "summer camp") woke up REALLY early.  Well, for 2 bloody weeks, I was staying with a bunch of kids for 5 days and 4 nights...  I LOVE kids, but I cannot stand to be woken up at 6 am!!!  For heaven sake, they were SCREAMING in the morning, or even PLAYING recorder EARLY IN THE MORNING!  That was unbelievably annoying.  Yet, it made sense and that it was my problem that I didn't sleep early enough...  So in the end I was sort of knocked over by my sleepiness and slept in the afternoon for 2 whole hours...  That, was slightly embarrassing.
  
  
  There were LOADS of fun moments when working with kids.  For instant, when taking them to the river, a little boy was so scared to walk through it that he was nearly in tears.  In the end, however, he didn't want to leave the river and was begging me to go back with him.  Then I don't really how little kids love my little pet, Michelle the cat.  They were almost ALWAYS yelling, where is Michelle?  Why is she sleeping all day long?  Oh, and I also remember their attempts to tell their little jokes...  It is interesting how some of the jokes I used to tell my peers still exist, if not modified...  Kids playing the same song all day long, complaining the fact that they are not going to play with one of the other kids but you see them playing happily together after 5 minutes...
  
  
  One of the funniest moments occurred last night...  Little mushroom (her nature name) had a sore throat.  So, with good intention, I boiled her some hot water and added some lemon and honey in it...  She started drinking it and liked it.  However, when I started to make her EAT the lemon slices I made, she was horrified.  ABSOLUTELY petrified...  Her facial expression was stunning!  Took loads of photos of her suffering, but I didn't not stop in pursuing my intention of making her eating lemon since it is really good for health.  She made it in the end, with much suffering, yet enjoyed the process (at least I did :P).
   
  
  One other interesting incident happened...  A five-year-old boy, Sam, was so in love with little mushroom, who was 8-year-old.  It seemed like age nor height is the problem with being in love.  So fascinating to see how the little boy delivered his gentlemen effort when helping the little girl out with putting matches or giving her little snacks...
  
  There was another event that occurred.  The second summer camp, 2 friends of ours whom we met when we were in Szechuan came to visit us.  It was amazing!  小夏姐姐 just got back from volunteering in Africa for half a year.  She had an amazing experience.  It was hilarious when she told us about how she was proposed by so many people back there.  Her illuminative, illustrative stories were brilliant!  There, I found another place that I could possibly volunteer at, somewhere in mainland China :)
  
  Anyway, if you had the delight to read through all of it...  I'll try to get some photos on next time but frankly speaking... something is wrong with my laptop that my card reader is not working...

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