Literature Camp 2015

"That is the end of the first national level Literature Camp 2015," said Miss Juliana. 

I spent a day almost 12 hours busying myself with this national level event which my friends and I worked hard to plan. The many visits to University Malaya, meetings and preparations for the book sharing, Literature Race were all a bunch of fun.

The day stated before the sun has awoken and the committee members, photographers, teachers dressed in our blue T-shirt, Red Crescent members in their white neat uniforms and the students of 5 Balau in casual clothing gathered in school. I remember being too excited to sleep the night before, no idea why. It was a big thing unlike anything that we've ever planned before. I rush out to school on my yellow bicycle after having a substantial breakfast. It was not enough of a breakfast later I realised. How nice it was to have my stomach grumbling for food after the race was over. We departed to our destination, the education faculty of University Malaya. When we arrived, we all climbed up to the administration block to meet our teachers bustling about giving out goodie bags and breakfast to the registered contestants.

Once we got our breakfast and got the green light from Madam Monica, our teacher-in-charge of the event, we headed out to set up our stations. The race lasted a really really long time (it felt like forever). Not only were the bugs and "invisible" mosquitoes unbearable but the humid weather made us sweaty and sticky. Gladly, once the day creeped closer to noon, the bugs and mosquitoes went away. During the race, my station was pretty boring truthfully. It was a more exciting interpretation to test the participants' knowledge on two of the many poems they were instructed to read - "There's Been A Death In The Opposite House" and "For My Old Amah". It made the play treasure hunt on some stairs with rails. Then classifying and figuring out the representation of the clues they found. Some of the groups were highly enthusiastic when they were searching for the clues. Sadly, many of them missed that one clue pasted behind the instructions that were on a pole. 

After the race, we had lunch. Before the next activity began, I got to know some interesting people. Some girls from Tunku Kurshiah College, Malay name Maktab Perempuan Melayu, is a premier boarding school located in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. I talked to Liyana, Shifaq and Asmah from that school. The girls were knowledgable and outspoken for 15 and 16 year olds. I half-expected them to be 17 like me but I then realised that not everyone is my age. Closer to home, I also met Nicholas and Calan from SMK USJ 12. How nice is was to find that they were frisbee fanatics like Xin Wei and I. Calan also knew my friend from Johor, Rachel Sia. How small this world is! My friend, Rebecca even had a friend that she reconnected with while most of us made some new buddies. It was a good way to get to know students from other schools through this event. I hoped for an activity where we could mingle but there was not much time for that.

After the short yet entertaining drama from the 5 Balau students, the event was then continued with the book sharing for the two books "Animal Farm" by George Orwell and "Inferno" by Dan Drown. The books were interesting books on different topics. One on how animals run their world and soon become what they sought to abolish but the animals do not know what is right or wrong anymore. They feel it is fair that their kind is leading them but do not realise they get less food than before the animals took over. Inferno about a debatable topic where a disease is released into the world to make a third(if not mistaken) of the population infertile that would contribute to stop the world from perishing due to the overpopulation of humans. The participants were sporting and shared their thoughts of the book combined with some recent topics. It was good to let them express but some of the participants were not so cooperative.

At the end of the event, many pictures and selfies were taken. Huge group photos of the participants and committee members taken separately. There was cake for the teachers and committee members courtesy of one of the teachers. The event was a success! We hope the schools that participated had a good time. I enjoyed myself with my friends. Even though it was just a one day event, it was really tiring. I crashed in bed really early that night and had a good night's sleep. Hopefully there are more events like this to come in the future. With that, I end my post for today. Cheers, till the next post!