Aye, those good ol' days at OBS. It's really worth remembering!
I have nothing much to say, really, but just be prepared for some major exaggerating. be prepared! :)
We did lots of back-to-basics stuff, like cooking in the outdoors, sleeping in tents, not getting to bathe at all during some days, having a mobile house (kind of like a snail), rowing a boat or walking as transportation etc. etc. Seriously, the only vehicle i saw was the Police patroling the ulu ulu island! (keeping a lookout for ali, maybe) the dinner on the last day was the tastiest meal i've ever tasted in five days!!
I was already badly homesick the first night. I almost cried! >< Been to many camps, but not one of them was as homesick as this one. It's probably due to the "out of comfort zone" thing. And I really started appreciating hot water baths and all that. It was shivering cold in the night! Even in the cubicle when i was bathing, the water was practically ice! I was trembling and shivering and I could see my goosebumps and my hands were shaking really badly. That was why i disliked bathing during OBS.
Another thing-- we "broke" OBS tradition! none of us got tan, none at all. We go to OBS fair-skinned, we come back looking even fairer, maybe with some dark rings around your eyes. Oh yeah, we were quite sleep-deprived too! i remember that we were half-asleep throughout the third night. we woke up in the middle of the night thinking that it was 5.30am when it was only 2.30am! in the end we just slept sitting up, with out heads buried in our knees (sorry, i'm not very good at describing) and we woke up from time to time to chat and tell each other, "I'm cold!"
New friends were made, and the friends I made were really really good friends :D Although some are PRCs and from overseas, I still thought that they were very, very nice! :) I met an amazing person who has 10 pets in her house! Huici's a crazy animal lover. Throughout the camp, she wasn't homesick but catsick. 7 cats, 1 dog, 2 hamsters. She may be loving her pets more than she loves her family! Mei juan and ven my were nice to chat to. i realised that my sings well (: she kept singing while we were trekking.
trekking. welllllllllll, i wouldn't say it was a 100% amazing experience, although, well, it was, in some way or another. It started pouring heavily and we got all our dry clothes and shoes(!!!) wet. soaking, dripping, wet. And we were carrying those 1 million kg backpacks and trekking for 11km in 4 hours. That was amazing, i have to admit. come to think of it, i would never have imagined me doing that. my heart really went out to yvonne and vanice, who were carrying those ponchos -- they were heavy! not the kind where you use for outdoor cooking, but really, the ponchos were HEAVY!!! THey managed to persevere all the way and refused to let us take over their job. After the endless trek, they became old women, with blisters, walking with limps and their backs hunched. Hope their alive and well now (:
rowing the boat was fun too. It sort of reminded me of the boats that i read in storybooks when I was young, where people like tin-tin rows his boat to some island -- that kind. Imagine when we would ever get to row a boat again?? So rowing the boat was fun too. kakay's boat hit the shore, was swept up by a wave and almost got turned over. That was really scary you know, even as an eye-witness. The boat is really heavy, and just imagine if it gets overturned... I can't imagine. ours got caught on a rope and hit this woody thing and some weird insects flew out and barged into our faces. in the end the instructor had to tow us out to shore (:
outdoor cooking isn't as fun as the guides type. we didn't do turfing, we used solid fuel tablets, which catch fire easily. It isn't the most basic of the basics. i think backwoodsman cooking is the basic of the basics. but the cooking part was fun too! haha, you know, in korea, maggie mee was my favourite food. but now, it feels like the worst food i've ever tasted! i am not going to touch maggie mee for some time... and the food rations were too much! TOO MUCH! but some watches amazingly managed to finish them all.. they're food-pros now!
i miss mauricette!! she was such a nice instructor! we didn't get to say goodbye to her... ohman. But anyway, just want to wish her the best of luck for university! :D
Lessons learnt from OBS:
1) Never use a sling bag to pack your stuff in for a camp if you do not want it to break apart due to heavy weight.
2) Always bring extra long-sleeved shirts if you do not want to re-wear your quite wet and stinky shirt again for countless times.
3) Wear longs to sleep if you do not want your tent to become a freezer at night.
Okay, that was just... not the REAL things i learnt.
4) PERSEVERE. prevail when all else fails :D
5) TEAMWORK.
6) TRUST.
7) HAVE FUN, even in the darkest times. Keep a smile on :)
BARKER ROCKS!!! I miss mauricette.
aS kidS See it
No comments:
Post a Comment