2.5 Weeks Ago, I was....
Where should I start?
Hmmm... ok, let me go down that list one at a time...
SINGAPORE ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEAF
I started volunteering at SADeaf on September 12, 2008. (I remember this date because it's a day after September 11 =P) I had my first meeting that day with the members of SADeaf YouthBeat, a division of SADeaf made up of both hearing and hearing-impaired youth volunteers. I have yet to meet everyone in the organisation because not everyone turns up for the meetings. So far, I've met Guo Wen, Celine, Ros and Erika. Although Guo Wen and Erika are deaf, Celine and Ros are hearing youth who are fluent in sign language, so they help to translate. I can't wait to start my sign language lessons in January 09 ^_^ Hopefully, after 6 months, I'll be good enough to not need an interpretor =)
I think it's very interesting working with an independent youth group because I get to meet people from different walks of life. Guo Wen is a working adult now and he's a trader for ForEx. Ros works in a finance company. Erika is a student at the Lasalle College of the Arts. Celine is a Junior (Yr3) in SMU School of Social Science.
SADeaf YouthBeat works on several projects each year. We're currently organising a leadership camp called Leo Camp 2008. The objective of this 4D3N camp is to encourage deaf students to take on active leadership roles in their daily lives. This camp is a collaboration between SADeaf and Outward Bound Singapore, and it is designed to help youth develop life skills like leadership, teamwork and communication, as well as to build their self-confidence and self-esteem through valuable challenges. Although the camp is targeted mainly at hearing-impaired students, hearing students are welcome to sign up for the camp too. We're looking at between 30-40 participants from Balestier Hill Secondary School, Boon Lay Secondary School, Singapore School for the Deaf, and Mountbatten Vocational School. The camp will be on December 12-15, 2008... and honestly, I can't wait for it to happen because I've never been to Pulau Ubin for OB Singapore before ^_^
STEP-UP PROGRAMME FOR ANG MO KIO PRIMARY SCHOOL
As part of my Leadership and Team Building course at SMU this semester, 40% of it is graded based on a community service project that is planned and executed by the group. (... this is a University Core course, so EVERYONE in SMU has to take this course regardless of the faculty you are in.)
We decided to work with En Community Services Society for our project, and through the Step-Up Programme, we're helping to educate at-risk students at Ang Mo Kio Primary School about different aspects of our community. FYI: "At-risk students" are students who have a higher propensity of falling into bad company due to the poor family background that they come from (e.g. single parent, divorced parents, low income families, abusive parents, etc.). They lack social and emotional support, and are prone to having behavioural problems. We work with about 30 students between the ages of 9 to 12 years old (YOUNG DEVILS!! Age can be deceiving!).
How exactly are we educating these students?
Through conducting 1.5 hours workshops twice a week (every Monday and Wednesday) for 5 consecutive weeks from Sept.15 to Oct.15, 2008. A new topic under the theme "Community and I" will be covered each week and the topics are as follows: interacting with the elderly, interacting with the disabled, saving the environment, school life (part 1), school life (part 2). These kids have a REALLY short attention span... so my group has to take that into account when designing the lesson plan for the workshops. The workshops usually consists of a 20min lesson, followed by a 1-hr game (the games we play help to re-enforce the lesson we taught), and finally 10min of reflection time. Besides these workshops, we also stay back after for "befriending sessions" where we play with them and talk to them. The basic idea is for them to stay in school until their parents get off work. This reduces the likelihood of them joining gangs and mixing around with "bad people".
As much as I love kids, I have to admit, I hated these students when I first met them. I hated teaching them because they are very disrectful, rowdy, and violent. I mean, they are REALLY loud and crazy monsters! They start fighting with each other in the middle of class. They leave the classroom without permission. They use curse words I didn't even know until a couple of years ago... and they use them ALL THE TIME when speaking. I feel sorry for their parents.... =/
But over time, these students grow on you =) Having worked with them for 3 weeks now, they are alot more well-behaved and obedient in class. Either that or I've gotten used to their loudness. There is still MUCH MUCH MUCH more room for improvment though. I guess it could possibly be because I'm no longer a stranger to them... and instead of "teacher", I allowed them to address me by "Felicia". Initially, that caused a big hoo-ha among them. "We can call teacher by her name leh...." was what one of them said in amusement when I first told them that =P That's when all the nicknames started coming up... and they would start calling me "Malaysia", "Feli-sheeeaa", and a whole bunch of other ones -_- It's crazy... but now that I see them every Monday (I take turns with my groupmates. Some of us conduct the workshop on Monday, while others on Wednesday), I've gotten used to it.
Pictures of the workshops we conducted...
Week 1 (Sept.15 n Sept.17): Interacting with the Elderly
This week was a special week because besides the regular Monday and Wednesday workshops, we brought the students on a field trip to an elderly home that Friday. By visiting the home, we wanted the students to apply what they learnt during the workshops by interacting with the elderly people there.
The classroom I teach in...
(Ya... I have no idea why they have a pool table and 2 foozball tables in the room. But the kids aren't allowed to play on them.)
This is Joshua. He likes to call himself and everyone else around him "Smelly".
At the beginning of class, we taught the kids to sing 2 songs: "Hero" by Mariah Carey and "Heal the World" by Michael Jackson. They performed these pieces at the elderly home on Friday.
On our way to the elderly home...
Arriving at Lions Befrienders...
I was really surprised when I first step foot into the elderly home. The old people were all actively participating in a game of bowling. They would actually keep score too... and everyone took the game seriously =P It was very cute to watch.
Some of the kids took the initiative to help by stacking the pins back in order for the next player.
Time for the kids to perform the songs we rehearsed...
During the workshop, I taught the kids how to fold cranes ^_^ No one in my group knew how to fold cranes either, so I ended up teaching all my friends too so they could teach the kids =P
We turned them into mini mobiles by stringing 8 cranes on a thread, and attaching that to a pair of chopsticks. I remember seeing this project in an art book once, but I never made it myself. I proposed the idea to my group, and they liked it. So we got the kids to make 40 mobiles (320 cranes) in school, and brought them to the home to give out to the elderly.
It brought me great satisfaction when I saw their smiling faces upon receiving the gifts =D
Thankfully, the kids were very well-behaved at the elderly home. In fact, they were like angels throughout the entire hour we were there. They were very shy and well-disciplined, and most importantly, they watched their mouths =P
Week 2 (Sept.22 n Sept.24): Interacting with the Disabled
We taught the students how to communicate and care for blind people, deaf people and the handicapped.
After the lesson, we played a game to simulate the challenges faced by the disabled people in their daily lives. The students were paired up with a buddy, and they would go through the obstacle course together.
Round 1: 2 handicapped people (... they would have to go through the entire obstacle course hopping on one leg)
Round 2: 1 handicapped and 1 blind person (blindfolded with a black trash bag)
Round 3: 1 blind and 1 deaf person (not allowed to speak)
Due to bad weather on Wednesday that week, we didn't get to play the obstacle course game on that day. Instead, we taught the kids to sign the letters A to Z =)
Week 3 (Sept. 29): Saving the Environment
We taught the students about the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling, and how those are ways they can save our environment.
Once again, we played a game with them during the workshop...
Yup... so that's about it for the workshops. We have another 2 more weeks to go from now =)
Co-Curricular Activities (CCAs)
(... just met up with Khai Bin this afternoon, and he told me I'm a "CCA-Junkie" because I was active in school clubs in secondary school, polytechnic and now univeristy =P I can't deny that! )
After going for the various trial sessions and auditions for the many clubs I signed up for during Vivace, I've finally decided to settle with 2 CCAs. My Freshmen year CCAs are:
Number 6... THAT'S ME!
Most of you have probably never heard of AIESEC before, neither did I before Vivace.
Pei Tian and I had dinner together before the gathering... she's also in AIESEC, PR & Branding department.
The emcee for the night doing a mic test...
Check out our cute name signages =P
Ruby is from NUS AIESEC, but she came down to SMU to join us for our gathering...
Alright... so that about sums up what I've been up to in my CCAs as of now.
-
As for my classes... well, I don't really take very many pictures during class because everyone would just give me weird looks and stares.
We had a leadership presentation in our LTB class this week though, and it was sort of like a fun presentation, so I got to take some pictures after my group got done presenting.
We had to do a presentation on 2 visionary leaders, one whose vision succeeded and one whose vision failed. We chose Walter Elias Disney (... better known as Walt Disney), and Nanz-Chong Komo (... better known as the CEO of the One.99 store).
The presentation was done in the format of a gameshow called "Vision Or No Vision" =D
Guys in my LTB Group:
(Left to Right: Luo Xi from China, Wei Ken from Malaysia, Lennart from the Phillipines)
Girls in my LTB Group:
(Left to Right: Zelanie from Singapore, Zehra from Pakistan, Pui Yean from Malaysia, and ME!)
GROUP PICTURE!
I have to thank Luo Xi because although we are classmates for LTB, he has helped me alot in Calculus too =)
-
Over the past few weeks, despite being SUPER DUPER busy... I felt very blessed because it's times like these that I realise how much the people around me care for me =)
Ghit Hong DEFINITELY surprised me!
I needed help with video-editting for a video my group made for our Business Law presentation. However, the video clips (which added up to about 5min long) took 5hours+ to transfer. So, by the time it was done transferring at 6pm, he had to leave home to head back to camp and didn't have time to edit the video for me. Before he left, he was like "Felicia, I'm so sorry I can't help you. Good luck!"
At 11pm that night, he called me to ask if I managed to get the video editted... and I was like "Erm... no, not really". That's when he told me to go check my e-mail...
He managed to edit the video, upload it onto a website so I could download and save it for my presentation.
I'm easily moved to tears when people do sweet things like that for me, and I teared a little while on the phone with him. I was very very VERY touched by what he did for me. Up until now, I have no idea how he managed to do it exactly... how did he sneak his laptop into camp? Where did he get internet connection from? He told me he got it done while travelling from home to camp (... that's like around 20min). I guess the fact that he did all he could to help me really touched me... it also took a load off my mind that night because I was still in the middle of preparing the written report and powerpoint slides for the presentation, PLUS rehearsing what I had to say for the presentation. Not having to worry about the video was a big relieve.
Some other friends that have been there for me are Jiang Han, Alan and Khai Bin. They would occasionally ask me out for movies, for dinner and just to hang out =) Spending time with them helps me to relieve stress!
Alan and I at Manhatten Fish Market (that's the name of the restaurant) at Clarke Quay...
This slice of cake cost $7... it was DELICIOUS!
Jiang Han and I having dinner at an American diner place in Orchard Cineleisure. We went to catch Big Stan after dinner... a 3/5 stars comedy movie.
Khai Bin and I at Chinatown...
We had lunch at a restaurant that specialises in hor fun =) Besides ordering hor fun, we got chicken with ginger hot pot, and dumpling soup ^_^ (... this place charges $0.40 for a glass of ice water, and $0.40 for a wet towel)
Khai Bin trying to get hold of Ghit Hong. He couldn't make it in the end though because he had to help his sister with her major project.
After lunch, we had "tang yuan" for desserts at Chinatown Food Street. That stall makes the BEST tang yuans and it's cheap too! 6 tang yuans for $2! You can pick from 5 flavours of tang yuan (green tea, red bean, yam, black sesame, peanut) and 2 flavours of soup (peanut soup, ginger soup). Ahh... just thinking about it now makes me want to have another bowl =/
Notice one similarity... hanging out with friends ALWAYS involves food in Singapore =P And you wonder why we're called the Food Paradise ^_^
If my friends didn't ask me out... I would probably end up spending ALL my time studying at home and in school =/ Yes... I am a workaholic and a nerd =S
-
I've got a new addition to my family =) Gelien these pictures are for you ^_^
Xin Yi, my cousin Kok Leong's daughter, was born on Children's Day - October 1, 2008. She's so lucky because all the kids will celebrate her birthday with her every year. AND it's a school holiday ^_^
Xin Yi is a heavy baby... she's 3.9kg. Most babies weigh between 2.5kg-3.5kg =P Because of that, she was given birth to through caesarian.
Babies always look so peaceful when they're asleep. They sleep so soundly...
I think I would look at my baby sleep all day when I have my own baby. Just watching them sleep makes the whole world stop ^_^ And they smell like powder all the time... Ahhhh.... Look at her cheeks! I can't wait to pinch her! HAHAHA!
Eileen and I didn't get a chance to hold Xin Yi that night because the visiting hours were over by the time we got to Thomson Medical Centre... So, we only got to see her through the window of the nursery =(
Xin Yi... wait until you get out of the hospital. When your mama and papa aren't looking, Auntie Felicia is going to pinch your cheeks and squeeze you tight!! =D
Kok Leong's wife was discharged from the hospital in the morning on Oct. 3.. later that evening, my other cousin, Mark, admited his wife into Thomson Medical Centre. She's still in there now, and they're waiting anxiously for the arrival of their baby girl ^_^ 2 newborn babies in the family in one month... how EXCITING!! And they're both going to be born in the hospital I was born in =D
Wei Li, I have 2 baby girls in my family... you want to play with them?? ^_^
-
Remember how I was complaining a while back about how the number of cats in my neighbourhood is increasing?
Well, there was this one night... I came home from school really late, and there were 5 cats at my void deck! This has NEVER happened before...
They look like they are getting ready for a soccer match...
(... these pictures were made possible with the zoom function on my camera)
Notice how they are all spread out and how they like to sit and wait next to a pillar... I bet they're just waiting to scare and pounce on their next unsuspecting victim =X *prays I'm not going to be one of them*
-
I FINALLY got my SMU EZ-LINK card last week... I can ride the train on concession rates again =D
Alright... I'm done blogging for now. THAT DEFINITELY took longer than 2 hours =P I probably spent at least 5 hours doing this entry... but it's worth it because now I'm all caught up again ^_^
Did I mention that next week is recess week for me? =D That means no school for a WHOLE week ^_^ Unfortunately, most of it will be spent revising for my mid-term tests though =/ Oh well... at least I get to stay home and study =)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home