Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Yo me hommies!
I promised some people I'll update by Tuesday, but yesterday I returned late so sorry! Shall update now. Before I proceed on to my Acheh experience I shall talk ABIT about what I did yesterday haha.
Went out with Amethyst Desmond and SACM crew of the Musical (Saw Justin!! XD), Nuah for damn long cause people who promised to come never came (NEVER yea >.<) Then watched Princess and the Frog. Seriously the movie is damn nice if you dig into the messages haha can't spoiler GO WATCH.
Singapore, 16th December 7.55am
It's my second Youth Church Camp, and the first time I know nuts about anyone in the camp except my mom, which doesn't count cause she's just going along with us to enjoy the trip and do almost nothing. Feeling estranged, I boarded the bus together with all the youths from Thompson Baptist after taking a group photo and talked to my first acquaintance, Samuel Puchuan! Eh Puchuan I can't find you on Facebook. He's a cool guy, same batch as me and looked older than me I think, cause of his hair I think haha =P.
We took a longish bus ride to Mersing Kelong Acheh, 3 hours above Causeway. Kelongs are villages built in the middle of the sea some distance off the coast with tall coconut trees as support and inter-weaving locks of wooden planks, nails and more wooden planks and wooden stuff and straw. The Kelong we went to is about the size of...1/3 of a soccer field I supposed, maybe a little bigger than that. I saw Water Buffaloes and Monkeys an Goats along the way to the coast to the Kelong, but was almost killed due to an uncalled for motion sickness. Sometimes I get motion sickness when I am on a bus for too long. But I love rocking boats haha. Weird me.
We reached the jetty at around 12.30pm, and happily tired to move over to the boat.... and stopped. The jetty, originally made up of wood, has been decided by the locals to be reinstated with cement. THUS. It was under construction (SO SMART RIGHT CONSTRUCT DURING HOLIDAY TOURING SEASON -.-) and half of it is nice, flat cement ground. The other half, is well, nothing. Only the skeleton of the jetty, the wooden beams, wooden ceiling and rock beams spaced out every 2-3 metres remain. So we had the first activity of the camp. We stacked wooden planks, flimsy looking ones and that, across the jetty and everyone crossed slowly across. Hwa Chuan my mortal had to cross alone cause..haha he had to cross alone. We were awfully late when we arrived at the Kelong.
The Kelong has a dining hall for around 50 people, a kitchen and sleeping quaters all over the place. The quaters are like army bunks but totally made up of wood. There are open areas facing the sky and sea for people to FISH. Yea, what we did during the 4 days, our main activity apart from camp stuff is fish. There are around 8-10 toilets around the area. The toilets are made up of flimsy iron boards and wooden planks, painted sky blue and everything looks so old haha. Well when we gotta answer to nature's calling everything falls into the sea, no flushing system. The thick coconut beams supporting the Kelong are all filled with barnacles (Blistering barnacles!), whites ones. So when you're riding the boat to the Kelong you see a big brown structure with white dots along its base.
Survival Island.
In the afternoon we youths split into groups and did Ice Breaking games and made our own flag. My group is the craziest and most energetic haha. It's called Ephraim, which means "fruitful". Ephraim is the second son of Joseph. My group leader is Hui Yue, assistant is Pu Chuan my bus buddy. Anyways we had this cheer where we raise both of our hands and shout 'EPHRAIM!!!!!' In a deep tribal voice. XD. Mandino, my group member, is our cheer engine, so is Xavian haha. YEA I RMBR ALL UR NAMES RWAR. So we tried to stand on small pieces of newspaper, jump over strings (half a spider web game) and drew our own flag. My group ended up with a large "Ephraim" shaded pink and outlined with deep purple and a giant durian colored with different hues of green behind. At the bottom of the white flag (Now pink and green) were the words "Hard outside, soft inside) and small yellow 'mmms'.
After dinner.. OH YEA. We eat like that there: Table for 8, a few dishes mainly seafood and sometimes chicken all malay food except for the fish. After dinner we had our first Sermon by Brother Clement and then group bible study before going off to sleep. The message that night is from James Chapter 1. To be leaders of Joy. =D Brother Clement I still rmb! That night, being still new and all I felt quite lonely. As I looked up to the skies I suddenly felt the presence of God. the whole sky was filled with Stars, big and small, bright and dim. It was a scene I never saw before and will not see even in the next few nights cause there wouldn't be so many stars again. It's just beautiful.
So that's it for day 1. Bathing was always terrible except for some people who spend 2 ringgits to buy hot water to bath? The most poor things are those who was bathing and the sudden sea weather sent in cold gusts of wind and rain. Nothing on the Kelong is completely water proof... toilets least of them all....
Tomorrow will be day two.
Blogged
@ 9:57 AM
Always, waiting. -
