Librarian One Day Camp 2015

14th of March 2015
Before the sun woke up, librarians dressed in our black librarian T-shirt and white school tees gathered in the school canteen. Everyone brought their bags and food, ready for a full day ahead of them. I walked to school with my beloved ice box, bought a bag of ice from 7-Eleven and made my way to school. It was still dark and chilly as I enjoyed my walk. We around 7.30 in the morning we boarded the bus and made our way to the two destinations which is the Rimba Ilmu and the library of Universiti Malaya. I went to Rimba Ilmu first so let me tell you about how my day went. Gladly, we were allowed to put our food and heavy items in a room before we began our adventure.

We started off with an informative explanation of the bugs we will be able to find later in the Rimba Ilmu. A young man named Safuan told us differences between an insects and other bugs like the spider which is an arachnid. We learned that an insects has 3 parts(for those who did not know already) which are the head, thorax and abdomen meanwhile a spider has only two parts-  the head and the cephalothorax. He introduced to us the damselfly which come from the same order as the dragonfly which is Odonata. They look pretty much like the dragonfly but the two insects have their differences. One, as larvae, the damselfly larvae has a little tail that the draognfly does not have. Secondly, when adult damselflies are at rest, their wings are held closed which is opposite to the dragonflies that have their wings open when at rest. It was even more intriguing when Safuan told us about the shedding of insects to become bigger. He even showed us a shedding of an adult damselfly if I am not mistaken.

An exoskeleton that has been shed

After that, we headed to the exhibition room. This room is where all the information and even some creative artwork was displayed. We even saw this display that creates a hologram. It was quite interesting. There were displays of the different types of stick bugs, butterflies, beetles and spiders. We even saw Lichen. Lichen may sound familiar to most form 4s because we learn about them in symbiosis as an example of mutualism. The lichen consists of a fungus combined with one or more species of alga. The fungus provides water and mineral elements as well as protection to the alga from intense sunlight, whereas the alga supplies carbohydrates from photosynthesis for growth. Thus there is symbiosis.

Lichen

Next we made our way to the Rimba Ilmu, there we saw many things including the different trees as our classes are named after trees. We saw a leafless tree that bears flowers only when the leaves drop. Other than that, we saw a huge Golden Orb spider, some huge pandan, a tree that sheds red leaves, lots of palm, red barked tree that makes itself look sick, some dragonflies at this marsh area, a cute tiny brown spotted toad, the mickey mouse plant, a huge Sukun tree leaf and many more interesting plants and animals. The best of them all was this beautiful clear pond which you would never expect to find in the an urban area like Kuala Lumpur. I fell in love with the clear water with the little fishes swimming around in it. The rest of the photos I took are on Facebook if you would like to see them.

Beautiful clear pond

When we gathered back, the other group was already feasting on lunch. We joined them and had our share. My friends and I grouped up and brought pizza, drinks, nuggets and fresh cold fruit. My habit of bringing fresh cold fruit is one hard to break. My love for watermelon and cold fruit runs deep. My juniors were overjoyed when they heard I bought cold watermelon. You should have seen how fast it was finished. Next was the ice breaking games which was 4 stationed game that made the teams swap around every 5-10 minutes. I was in charge of the chopstick game. As always, most of my photos are on Facebook but here is one on the better ones.

After that we had some complications with the bus driver that did not know he had to pick up one more round. Gladly the bus finally came and we went to the library at around 2.15 in three rounds due to the insufficient space. We had a short 15 minute tour compared to the 45 minute tour the first group got. It was not that enjoyable though. I would have wished for a chance to glance through the amazing trove of English fictional books that sat proudly on a whole one and a half floors. We moved to a empty space close to the big bus stop in Universiti Malaya and played our last game which was Minesweeper. Then we got back to school and was joined by the other group before our camp was finally finished. Everyone adjourned home happily and safely. It was a good camp this year but a little bit more messier than expected due to the lack of leadership and slight confusion.

That is all for now, hope you have enjoyed my post. Till next post!