Coming back home, with the stark realisation of the amount of school work waiting for me. How nice.

But it was a good weekend. I came to realise how good a camp was is hard to define. It wasn't fantastically smooth-sailing, yet at the end, we all knew it was a good camp. There were many moments of unhappiness for me, yet there were so many times when i laughed wholeheartedly.

This camp brought more insights to me regarding the PRCs we thought we knew so well. Yes there were the unshaven armpits, there was the lingering odour, there were the loud and noisy mandarin banter, and also the geekiness of those scholars.

I didn't go with much expectations, probably because i wasn't expecting too much difficulty. Yes it was an outdoor camp, and we indoor coaches may find it difficult. Well ... I've been cheering aplenty in school for the past 3 years, and people in school know i love to cheer. It was like returning to a familiar scenario, yet i wanted to keep the mask on. Maybe i didn't want to ban meng long fu, knowing how good the outdoor coaches are (but trust me we are matchable). I can't believe i even called junyue to ask him for his cheers but end up not using because my major groups had strong enough coaches to lead the cheers.

Perhaps i ought to regret taking a backseat, and that maybe if i had lead in the cheers and be more outdoor-ish, i would gain more satisfaction now. But i guess i wanted to concentrate on what i am stronger in.

Sometimes I am really glad for this proficiency in both aspects ... yet sometimes it leaves me in a dilemma.

Anyway ... back to the PRC camp. It was quite a sight seeing them arriving at the camp site. It was basically Chinatown and i was shocked to see some of them decked in jeans. Upon our first breakout, i found out they were there more for the fun and happiness than anything else. Well, i guess their expectations helped in making the camp a success when we offered more =p

I am truly glad to be part of this experience and has learnt a lot from this culture exchange. They hate to sit down. Yes. It's EXTREMELY difficult to get them to sit down. They would rather talk standing up, eat standing up, rest standing up ... it's damn hard for us to understand.

Reasons found : The floor is too hard thus if you sit too long, their backside will be sore. They will feel lazy and lethargic if they sit down. They rate backside sore much worse than legs sore. At night when they sleep, they still need to rely and press on their backside, but their legs are rested hence might as well just rely on their legs during the day.

Anyway my point was that it wasn't easy to manage 300+++ PRCs if they refuse to sit down. So hard to do head count. So messy. So chaotic.

But i guess both us and them slowly acclimatise to each other's practices. Day 2 onwards, they begin to be less resistant to sitting down and we were more tolerant of them standing up.

We were told to converse in them in English, but i was just conversing to them in mandarin if i really wanted them to understand something better. All in all, i am just really happy to be doing this camp with the indoor coaches like Lifen, Zhang, Yuyuan, Don, Dejun, Choo and Theresa ... being part of this pioneer group handing this project. Am really impressed with the outdoor coaches like Tim, Jason, Ivan, Norman and Sham with their boundless energy and crazily power rapport building.

Oh ... and my group too. Although they were a few who were more introverted, a bit nonchalant, but for the rest who were polite, respectful, helpful and enthusiastic, I really bonded well with them. Was very touched when they all wrote something in a file for me. Haha can't help but to haolian to the rest of the coaches. =x

On the 3rd day, we threw them a performance night and the performances they came up with within the time constraint just showed us how united, how creative, how talented they are.

Ah well ... till the next time then. For now, i've got to deal with the tens of mosquitoes bites on my legs.