Monday, December 10, 2007
12:52 PM
I think I'm finally energetic enough to start blogging again. I slept for 16 hours yesterday! I came back from OB Sabah on 8th Dec at 2 am and went to crash my church camp at 7 so I was pretty tired (:
I really enjoyed Sabah, especially all that scenery cause it was just so prettyyyy! Like the clouds, the rain, the mountains, the jungle were all sooooo amazing it makes me wanna go back once again! Watching the sunrise from the peak of Mt Kinabalu was really the highlight of the course for me. And the accomplishment and satisfaction experienced after conquering the summit really takes the cake!
So many things happened over there but I just can't write it all down now cause it'll take some time for me to remember them all and I don't have the time now since I have to go for tennis soon...
It's raining now though, maybe...HEH HEH HEH.
OH GOSH! GUESS WHAT JUST HAPPENED! I JUST RECEIVED A PHONE CALL AND TRAINING'S CANCELLED! MY WISH JUST CAME TRUEEEEE. I feel so lethargic today I don't think I can play tennis properly so all's well.
So....I shall tell you all about my trip to Sabah! It'll be a pretty long post so brace yourselves. Go for a toilet break first if you want to carry on reading!
Ok...so my group was made up of mainly mg girls and 3 barker guys. We (mg) got to stick together because we're doing a project for our sabbaticals! (: Our group Chicky Chicky was quite fun already lah since the mg girls kinda knew each other already. And our trainers Rechel (AKA Chicky) and Andrew were the best ever! You have no idea how much I cried when Chicky and Andrew (well sort of) sent us off at the airport.
Ah...but on to the more happy activities: We had this day where we did the high elements which include the flying fox, giant ladder, trapeze jump and rock climbing. Forgive me if i missed any other of the high elements out! I was pretty scared doing the flying fox one since we had to climb up this really high ladder and it just looked really scary from up there. Maybe I do have a fear of heights!
Another day we went sailing and the waves and the sea breeze was sooo nice. At first we rowed a bit then our sails caught some wind so we didn't have to row the rest of the way to the island! Oh oh! And OB Sabah base had lime trees so we plucked some lime to smell on the trip to prevent us from getting sea sick. I now know the trick to not feeling sea sick! That is to stare at a non-moving object that's far away! (: Camping at the island was pretty fun but I think i might have gotten bitten by red ants though i know nothing about how ant bites look like. Oh i got bitten by a few sand flies too! We had a bon fire at night because Andrew collected lotsa wood for us on the beach. We didn't exactly sail back cause there was no wind but we rowed back in record time! I think it was about 2 hours? WHEE~
Ok, so what i say isn't exactly in chronologically order but what do you expect! Hahaha. I kinda lost track of time since 1) I didn't bring a watch and 2) We didn't exactly have to write dates for anything like we do in school. Ok so another thing we did was to go to this village where we stayed at this house (which was supposedly OB Sabah's logistic manager's house but we don't know if Chicky was lying, haha) but the kids there were super cute. At first they were like shooing us away but after a while they began to warm up to us and played with us. Or rather we played with them lah. At their house there were lots of chicks, roosters, hens? and ducks and tortoise, and pigs and dogs and cats! So many animals right! I vividly remember the long and tiring walk chicky took us on to look at the village where she lied to us that we had to turn back and walk the long distance again when the whole village had a circle loopy route and we were back at our house after a while. Oh and they had like snakes in this big bucket in the toilet and fish too. It really opened my eyes. Oh oh! And we watched tv for the first time ever at that house during the course. At night we watched HSM! Hahaha. We didn't have a cultural experience there that day because someone in the village passed away. Our instructors taught us an "eagle dance" on the last day of the course though! It felt awkward at first but in the end I think everyone enjoyed themselves (:
Ok...moving on...on the last day we built this raft and 'rafted' in the sea. It was supposed to be a competition so Abel said that if our group won we'd get ice cream! So like we were all so encouraged that we won! Hahaha.
Oh and when we all climbed to the summit of Mt K, we sang Wayne a birthday song since it was his birthday that day. If i were climbing the mountain on my birthday i would have felt so happy! Like I'm one year older and I made it to the peak! Double the happiness! After we descended from the mountain andrew surprised wayne with a birthday cake! See, our trainers are so sweet! When we climbed Mt K it was really cold (like 10 degrees) but i heard that the SJI guys had it worse since they climbed it when the temperature was -5 degrees. So we had it good. And we were really fortunate that it didn't rain or else we wouldn't be able to make it to the summit at all. The Lord was really good to all of us since my whole group made it up to the summit and we all made it down safely as well. Haha, i still remember that julia and thiam practically ran down the mountain to the last checkpoint to go tandas! The rest of us just walked down slowly lah, but it was a nice and relaxing walk since we got to see lots of surrounding mountains and clouds and vegetation.
We went jungle trekking on one of the days too. Like we were supposed to go to this 1550m point to camp out in the jungle so Christel and Cumaran led us there. Some parts were extremely steep that I had to practically crawl up and dig my fingers into the mud to hoist myself up the slope. We had to grab onto trees and roots to get up the slope! So after a few hours of sweating and being smelly and exhuasted, we finally made it up but we couldn't camp on the high ground in case we got struck by lightning so we made our way down once again to find a suitable camp site. It was really cool when we made a tent with bamboo (we copied our trainers' idea lah) and slept in it! That night only Abel and Cumaran camped out to keep the fire going I think.
Andrew taught us to read the constellations map and showed us some photos of himself and the scenery at OB New Zealand. It's so pretty there! Maybe I'll head there next! Ok I think my brain's too exhausted because I can't think of anything else that happened at Sabah!
So I shall talk about the food. It was great! We had tea and milo sometimes and nice fruits like pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe (i think), apples and bananas. And for lunch and dinner it was rice and chicken, sometimes beef (which i didn't eat because i dont' like beef but the others said it was nice) and at other times fish. They were cooked differently all the time so we never got tired of all the food! Or perhaps we were too hungry already. Our cook was Pachi (i dont' really know how to spell his name) but he cooked real nice food including these which I forgot to mention! Mee goreng, goreng pisang, noodles for breakfast...we had biscuits for supper! They were really addictive.
After this course, I feel like being a backpacker! Hahaha. And travel to the nice places to appreciate all the beautiful places the Lord has given us. I guess since my degree keeps increasing and I'm afraid i'll go blind (but of course everyone says that won't happen but it's better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best right! (: ) I have to be thankful for everything now. Oh but my daddy says backpacking is pretty dangerous so i'll have to go with really good friends who can really stick it out with me. Oh and i'll have to get a strong guy to accompany us in case anything goes wrong! I doubt my brother would go. But backpacking is like real tough and i dont' know whether I'll be ever prepared for it so maybe it'll be better to earn money and rent a caravan and roam the world! hahaha. NOT. I'd miss home too much. And it'll be super ex. Maybe I should just sit at home in front of the tv and watch discovery channel and animal planet and national geographic. All in the comfort of my own home. Hahaha.
BACK TO SQUARE ONE!
See you all real soon~
-you make my life perfect-
