This is gonna be a long long entry. Today was really a fun-filled day for me, first with the carnival and then with the bible quiz.
Let me start first with Hwa Chong's Homecoming Carnival. I truly didn't expect it to be as fun as it turned out to be. The weather wasn't very promising initially as it was raining quite heavily. I went to the tennis stall cos I was supposed to do the first shift there, from like 9 to 10. But I left soon after cos the j2s had to go to the audi. Our class turnout was quite pathetic but while we were waiting for the guest-of-honour to come, we were having fun playing with the balloons. Haha. Then after that when we were doing the countdown, we all released our balloons and popped the confetti stuff. I practically had confetti all over me and some got stuck in my hair. Anyway, after that the concert started. It was mainly dances and a wushu showcase. But the latin dance was simply amazing. Then after that went back to the canteen again and finally used my coupons to buy nachos. Met jessie and huiling shortly after then we went to the haunted house, which was set up partly by the junior class. Anyway we met wendy there and took some pix. Had to wait quite long queueing. Quite a few of my classmates were behind us in the queue. While waiting, jessie and I were listening to Jet's CD. Even though I've heard some of the songs, I think it's quite a nice CD. Anyway we finally went into the haunted house after waiting for like 40 minutes. The haunted house was not really scary, but we had a very hilarious time there. I mean we already expected that there would be ghosts or some creatures at the corners, but I was still shocked when I saw them and started screaming like mad. It was mostly me screaming, and huiling. Jessie didn't really scream much cos she was behind holding on to my back. Anyway I hit the first ghost who I thought was lide (it really turned out to be lide.. sorry for hitting you..). And we all screamed at the final ghost.. this really tall one with a long mouth. Haha..we were still laughing when we went down the stairs after coming out and my stomach hurt real badly. But the only gripe was that the haunted house was at LT5 and i nearly tripped because there were so many stairs.
Anyway, jessie had to go off soon after and huiling went to find charmaine. So I went back to the tennis stall again and then after that met nasal, ai lian and wen hooi. I was trying to spend my coupons buying food cos I was really hungry. Bought quite a lot of stuff to eat. But I still didn't manage to finish all my coupons. Sold one to jessie and huiling and i gave another to sin hui.
After that, zaneta and I rushed to church from school for the bible quiz. There were 8 of us from our class for the quiz - me, zaneta, stella, zhimei, dawn, raymond, jian jia and jeremy. We didn't really study properly for the quiz, so before that, we were like choosing 1 church each from the 7 churches to study on. Anyway, we had a short worship session and briefing. We were supposed to answer 5 fundamental questions before we got the 6 items for the Tabernacle. Then we were supposed to arrange the items correctly in the Tabernacle before we could get a map of the 7 stations, corresponding to the 7 churches, at different parts of the church. So we had to go to each station, in any order, and answered the questions there before we could get a box. So in the end, we had to get 7 boxes altogether before we could complete the quiz and put the boxes in this cross inside the wesley hall. But along the way, we could encounter secret policemen who could persecute us (cos at that time there were a lot of persecutions at the churches) if they saw the Bible or the boxes. Even if we put the boxes in our bags, they would still do a spot-check. Once persecuted, we had to go to the persecution area (which was at the church of Jerusalem cos that's where the persecution was worst) and performed a forfeit before we could get ourselves out and get back the boxes. So we really had to be careful and basically, just have to go back to wesley hall to put the boxes once we've gotten them. We spent quite a lot of time strategizing initially. In the end we decided to bring zaneta's and stella's bags along so that we could use one as a decoy. And we brought the smallest bible there was (cos we could only bring 1 bible). After that we went to the canteen to start and that's when the fun really began.
We had to wait to answer the 5 questions cos we reached there quite late. But we answered the questions quite quickly and arranged the items of the Tabernacle correctly on our first try. I was quite impressed with the items especially since they were hand-made. So after that, we started running to Phillipi cos that's the church nearest to the canteen. There we had to fill in the blanks and literally fish out the answers from this 'pond' using the fishing rod. It was really difficult to fish out the answers cos we had to use the magnet on the rod to pick up the clip attached to the 'fishes'. We would often pick up the fish using the rod but then the fish would fall back into the 'pond' again before we had a chance to grab it. But in the end we succeeded though I think we had 1 wrong answer.
After that we went to Ephesus. We had to figure out the answer to the math sums that were thrown to us and then answer the question at the corresponding number. If we got the answer wrong, 1 person from the team would have starch thrown at him. Zaneta volunteered for the team and well since we didn't really study properly, she was soon smeared with starch.
Then we went to Rome. Here, the team would be divided into half. One half would stand at this place which was 1 storey higher. Basically the other half would have to figure out the answers to the questions and once they have the answers, they would somehow get the jigsaw puzzles given to the other 4, who would then complete the puzzle (the puzzle is actually the key verse for the church). Anyway, me, zhimei, raymond and jeremy went upstairs. Jian jia then tried to get the puzzles to us by putting them in one of his shoes and throwing the shoe up. It really took a lot of throws to get the shoe up to us. It was really funny haha. Then after that we had to go down to rejoin the team, and zhimei accidentally pressed the wrong floor in the lift, so we had to go back to the lift again to go to the correct floor. We must have been really frantic.
So after that some of them went to put the boxes we got from rome and ephesus. We put them in zaneta's bag but then while they were running to wesley hall, we saw the secret policemen. Think they managed to escape. But the 3 of us (me, stella, zhimei) who didn't have to put the boxes back were caught by the policeman, who was none other than lina our class teacher. So we had to go the jerusalem (which was actually at the tennis courts) to do the forfeit. We had to wait for the rest of the team there to rescue us. The forfeit we had to do: 30 jumping jacks around the tennis court while saying "I love Jesus" at the same time. While we were doing the forfeit, we had like water bombs thrown at us. After completing the forfeit, we decided to answer the questions at jerusalem since we hadn't gone to that church. The questions were quite tough, but the real deal was that if we got the questions right, we'd get water bombs thrown at us. If we got them wrong, one person at the station would paint a cross on our faces using colgate, the toothpaste. We had 2 wrong answers so we had colgate on our faces. The colgate felt quite.. refreshing on our faces but some got to my hair also.
Then we went to Corinth. The station was at least clean, finally. Basically, we had to link hands and somehow transfer the answer to the questions from person to person. We managed to do that quite quickly. Then after that we wanted to put the boxes back at wesley hall (we had 2 with us). So jeremy took zaneta's bag with the boxes inside and what do we know? We saw the secret policemen again. Jeremy managed to duck them cos he was still upstairs while the rest of us went downstairs already. He threw the first box down to zaneta who managed to get into wesley hall. Then he threw second one to me. But while I was running there 2 policemen came out. Like out of nowhere. So I wanted to throw the box to stella who was in front of me and who was nearer to wesley hall. But I threw the box while I was running and obviously, I had forgotten what I've learnt in physics, so I had to catch the box myself again cos I threw it while I was running. So silly. Stella was laughing like mad after that. But anyway I managed to get the box somehow to zhimei who was also standing somewhere in front of wesley hall, but by then the policemen caught us, despite stella's best efforts to block them. So we ended up having to another forfeit at jerusalem. This time we had to run around the tennis court with the used water bombs and sort of 'soaped' ourselves with them while saying "I wash myself with Jesus' blood" or something to that extent. At least this time we didn't get as wet as before. And we got the box back.
Then after that we went to Thessalonica. Basically we had to find jigsaw puzzles from among this box of junk and find the answers from among the puzzles. Apprarently we were the fastest team for that station. Last of all, we went to Colossae. Four of us would get blindfolded and the other 4 would be guides. We had to navigate the blind-folded poeple through an obstacle course and at the end, we would have to write down the answers to the questions that we had to memorise. I was one of the guides and had to guide zaneta. The blind-folded people had to crawl under chairs arranged in a weird manner then crawl under more benches and cross a bridge then walk downhill. It was really tough trying to guide zaneta especially since the field was also wet from the rain. But in the end we managed to complete the whole quiz.
Overall we came in 3rd. At least we maintained our position from last year. We received this prize of Christian CDs and books. But the teachers forgot to remove the price tag for one of the books. The book cost $16.90 and that was when we realised that our prize was quite expensive. We had 5 books and 4 CDs altogether. And that was only 3rd prize.
All in all I really had fun today even though now I'm like quite exhausted. But I bet the good feeling won't last. Have to get down to work again like tomorrow. Sigh.. life is getting really mundane isn't it? And I doubt the holiday on Monday will help much. Wish I really have days like today more often.