It's been a really hectic week. Marilyn and I organised Choir sessions and an overnight camp for the kids. Here goes...

Monday: Choir practice from 3.30pm to 6.30pm.
Tuesday to Wednesday: Choir Camp from 8.30am (Tue) to 6.30pm (Wed).
Thursday: Choir workshop at Gan Eng Seng with 3 other schools from 2pm to 6pm.

I was feeling really awful last Sunday and ended up snoozing the whole day. I didn't turn up for my nephew's one-month old celebration and dinner plans with Mag and Zhiwei were cancelled. I felt a lot better on Monday, so I was able to drag my feet to school for Choir. I shouldn't say 'drag' really because I enjoy watching and listening the kids. They've improved quite a fair bit, though they didn't sound very good on Monday.

Tuesday morning came and it was a flurry of mad rush to check all the paper work and get their lunch ready by noon. It was such a headache trying to tally the number of kids with the amount of food I'd ordered so much so that my fever returned. I decided to pop a couple of panadol pills (courtesy of Mr Lau who noticed, weeks ago, I was sick when I was at the General Office and passed me some tablets) before running around with my errands again. Thank God for Marilyn and Shilin, who came back to help out. I drove to Redhill market to get more packed lunch with Shilin because I'd ordered less. By then, I was perspiring quite a bit. The fever subsided when afternoon came so I felt a lot better.

Then we had another problem. I found out (AFTER searching high and low for and checking with all other CCA teachers who had organised camps during the holiday week) that Choir couldn't use the AVT between 8.30pm and 10pm after all. Guorong had booked it for Badminton. In the end, Marilyn and I decided to hold our mini-concert at the foyer, praying and hoping hard that no other CCA groups would be using the place for their own activities that night.

Thankfully, we had the foyer all to ourselves! All six groups took turns to perform a song and an advertisement jingle. It was sheer fun! I think most of the kids enjoyed themselves. I know I did. I nearly died laughing watching how entertaining they kids were. One group had a really hilarious advertisement jingle: a whole bunch of them stood in the centre and sang the jingle while, in the background, this fella crawled on all fours from their left side to right. Then suddenly, in a deadpan manner, he mooed (REALLY like a cow!) and recited the entire string of words (not a single word missing!) from the advertisement. Everyone roared in mirth. It was priceless! I wonder if Marilyn had recorded it down on her digital camera. If she had, I'll try to post it up here soon.

After the mini-concert, we had the night walk. Red Cross had it at the same time as us. I'm glad most of the kids enjoyed themselves. However, as usual, I had to tick a couple of students off for being passive and uncooperative during debriefing.

The next day, we had mainly 2 activities in the morning. The first one was a puzzle game which required every member in the group to participate actively. It was clearly not an easy game because only 1 group (out of 3) managed to come up with the solution. The other 2 groups got frustrated due to several factors (one of which was some of the group members were not cooperative) and gave up halfway. The group that found the solution broke into 2 groups and went to help the other 2 groups. Even then, I observed that the other two groups relied very heavily on help and not everyone was actively contributing ideas other than the group leaders.

By the time every group was able to solve the puzzle, we were running behind schedule but went on with our station games anyway. The groups ran around the school while I went about snapping pictures of them performing various tasks. Hm, I must get the photos from Marilyn soon.

The camp ended with an SYF practice session which finished off at around 6.30pm. Everyone went home while Marilyn and I stayed on to clear our tables and some paper work. My dad came to fetch me home and I concussed right after dinner.

Thursday's workshop at Gan Eng Seng wasn't too bad. I'm sure every school choir brought home at least one learning point from the rest. I've been praying that we'll get Silver this year. When I see how hard the kids have been working each week with Ai Ming, I can't imagine the disappointment we have to deal with if we can't achieve Silver. Our efforts to gel them through the camp and to get them to be more confident of themselves proved rather effective when they appeared less afraid when they stood on stage in Gan Eng Seng's school hall. They were a lot less confident during the workshop we had at VCH 3 weeks ago. I hope this confidence doesn't back down as the SYF date draws nearer.

I popped by school on Friday morning to grab some work - with every intention to do marking with Cheryl and Pei Chin today. (Sigh, but see what has happened now.) Then I drove to town for my appointment at BioSkin and walked over to Paragon to get a new toy! Woots! I spent the rest of the day exploring my new toy. I love the reflection, which you can't really see from the pictures below.