Took a trip to Japan with my family recently for a week, just came back on Wednesday night. Japan was really cold, freezing cold, didn't expect it to be so cold. And the food was almost always the same. Japanese really love pickles, vegetables, seafood, noodles, little meat, and not forgetting the miso soup (all the soup seemed to taste the same). But the trip was quite OK. Got to visit Mt. Fuji. Well, we didn't get to go up to the peak, but we reached quite a high altitude. The scene was stunningly beautiful, the snow-capped peak, the dried, but colourful autumn leaves and other things..I so loved the view. Too bad the temperature wasn't low enough for us to see snow again. And we also got to visit Universal Studios and Disneyland. Well, the two places are a complete rip-off from the ones in LA, only that everything is spoken in Japanese instead of English, but we still had fun and managed to try the new rides that weren't open when we went to LA. The only bad thing was that it was pouring on the day we went to Disneyland - it was like a typhoon with heavy rain and strong winds, so couldn't take many pictures and rides. Oh..I took quite a lot of pictures with the digital camera, don't know why there's this sudden interest. Must have been inspired from Xiaowei taking pictures with her camera during the class chalet. It's a pity I didn't get to learn new Japanese words during the trip. But I did learn one thing: to appreciate the weather in S'pore. I mean..really, and the food too.
Went for Camp Olympus, this CIP camp organised by the soccer and tennis girls teams with some external organisation, on Friday and Saturday. It's actually supposed to be a three day and two night camp, but I was lazy to go for the full course. Initially, I wasn't supposed to go for the camp because I thought it'd clash with the trip, but then they pushed back the date and I thought I'd go for erm..some CIP hours. The camp was for P3-P6 girls of CHIJ Our Lady of Good Convent. The first day was quite boring, I was even regretting having turned up at all, but the second day was much better. We were supposed to teach the girls how to play soccer and mini tennis, and some other sports, namely floorball, volleyball and frisbee. Obviously, the tennis girls taught the girls mini tennis. The first day of camp, it was raining, so we had to make do teaching the girls indoor inside the hall. There wasn't much we could do and the girls got bored pretty easily. The weather was much better on the second day and we were able to teach them outdoors, which was more fun. The girls were divided into four groups - Apollo, Athena, Venus and Zeus. I wasn't supposed to be a group leader because I couldn't stay for the whole camp, but because Apollo had only one group leader on Friday, I became their group leader temporarily for one day. I managed to make quite a lot of friends with the girls in the group. We all had been warned earlier that quite a number of the girls come from dysfunctional families, and I kind of pitied some of the girls, like Lynn. Lynn came across to me as this rather loud and ungentle girl..sort of like a tomboy, but as time went on, my impression of her changed for the better. All of the HC girls thought she had leadership potential, and she was really enthusiastic during the camp. It's just a pity she has been brought up the wrong way. Another one was Dahlia. I was quite touched when she told me that her father died and she is now taken care by her uncle. She only meets her mum once a week because her mum has her own boyfriend. She even adopts her uncle's surname and becomes a Catholic. Her story makes me realise how lucky I am to be having such a wonderful and caring family. The two girls that I mix around with the most were Joey and Rachel. Everyone thought Joey is pretty and she certainly has a flawless skin and good posture, thanks to her being a ballerina dancer. She can also do cartwheels. Rachel is mixed blood as her father is Dutch, but she looks like any other Singaporean. The youngest girls in the group were Joanne, this P3 girl that is just so cute, and Jia Yi, who has this infectious laughter. The other girls in the group were Claudia and Grace. I really thought Apollo was really a good group, they were really enthusiastic. And all of them, especially Lynn, tried to make Grace, who has some sort of disability, feel part of the group. The groups were supposed to do a group cheer for the campfire, but in the end, the girls did something that was more like a group item. But it was really good effort from the girls..they came up with everything themselves and even included formation of pyramids as part of the group 'cheer'. Really hope Apollo won the competitions that were supposed to be held today; they deserved it.
Went out for lunch to Chinatown with my family to celebrate my father's birthday. It's been quite a long time since we all go out to have a meal together, so I kind of treasure time spent with family nowadays.
Can't wait for the soccer match tonight between Chelsea and MU. As a MU fan, of course I'm hoping that MU will win, but I'm contented with a draw. And Arsenal will also be playing. I still remember that Wednesday night when we came back. The first thing my brother, an Arsenal fan, that my brother did after we came home from Japan was to check the result of the Inter vs Arsenal match, as we couldn't find time to check the result in Japan earlier. My brother was totally gloating over Arsenal's 5-1 trashing of Inter, especially since two of us (me and my youngest brother) had predicted that Arsenal would lose by quite a large margin. Sigh.
Better get going with studying for SAT now. It's only a week away and I'm only like at Word List #5, and there are 50 word lists altogether. I'm really going to go crazy studying all those words. But I guess I gotta work hard, especially since I'm missing church camp just because of SAT. Bleah.
Kind of hungry now...think I'm going to go off for dinner..