Oh yeah, I just remembered... I'm a student!

The first day of uni has come (again. We sure go through many "first days" in our lifetime). Heading off in 15 minutes.

I'm doing a unit on C programming this semester, but my laptop has begun to show signs that it will pass away soon. Might make my homework a tad bit hard to finish.

Oh dear.

The invasion of the little children, accomplished

It's been a while since I was able to crawl out of bed at 10.30am! Not that I minded, really. I miss the kids already... especially my Blue Baboons!

Colour-coded leader nametags. The one on the top-right shows that Sze Howe became Jeremy for one week ^_^

The kids were split into 3 teams: The Red Rhinos, the Green Geckos, and the Blue Baboons. The Rhinos won overall (grr! well done!), continually competing with the other two teams on being the quietest (when other people were talking on stage), being the loudest (when doing team chants), remembering memory verses, producing awesome crafts, winning games, and answering quiz questions.

Listening carefully to instructions...

...and they're off!

Behold the cute fearsome cute monkeys

.

.

Playing with the parachute

Part of the obstacle course

Big circle

The games that Adele prepared were not designed to cater for such large numbers, and it was probably illegal to have so many kids crammed in one room anyway. So, we had more group subdivisions than in previous years. Traffic congestion became an issue during activity swaps, as a result.

Nothing that a PowerPoint presentation can't fix though!

Now, it would be rather boring if that was our only challenge, wouldn't it? :-D We never had to worry though, "dull moment" was a term that's definitely not in the King's Club dictionary.

There were kids who grazed their knee; there were kids who got very sick.

There were kids who needed help cutting out their puppet, because the lines were too close together; there were kids who needed their mummy, because they were overwhelmed by this unfamiliar place.

There were kids who wanted to be chosen to go up on stage every time; there were kids who wanted to just crawl around the chairs while everyone else was singing.

There were kids who wanted to tell everyone in their small group about their fishing trip, during the discussion about the drama. There were kids who wanted to know, in their small group: since God is forgiving, does that mean we can wait a bit longer before we come back to Him? (yes, children can be intellectual too)

There were kids so timid that we had to constantly look out for them; there were kids who were hyperactive enough to...

...bring...

...giants...

...down.

And then there are kids who mess with leaders' minds:

Kid: Somebody else took my mask!
Me: *panics* (What?! This happened to the same kid yesterday! It can't possibly happen twice!!!)
Me: Are you sure? Have you looked around here? *points to the few uncollected masks on the table*
Kid: Somebody took my mask! I saw it!
Me: *groans* Ok, tell me what your mask looks like, and we'll try to find it, alright?
Kid: Mine has a blue nose, like this one. But it's different. *points to the blue-nosed mask with brown squiggles*
Me: *inspects mask, but can't find a name written on it* Hmm... a blue nose? Well, this mask has a blue nose. Is it yours? *holds the same mask out*
Kid: Nooooo! That's not mine! Mine's different!
Me: Tell me more about your mask. What is the colour of its face?
Kid: *squints at the blue-nosed mask with brown squiggles* Black.

(At this point, Mom arrives)

Mom: Ready to go home?
Kid: Somebody took my mask!
Mom: *stares* Not again?
Me: (This ain't gonna be pretty)
Kid: OH, THIS IS MY MASK! *grabs the blue-nosed mask with brown squiggles*

And you wonder why old people get wrinkles.

Nonetheless, despite my complaints about high blood pressure, it was definitely a fulfilling 5 days. It's also not everyday that people across the many generations to work side-by-side like this -- Generally, the younger engaged with the children directly whilst the elder handled the behind-the-scenes preparations. Other congregation members got involved too, through continuous prayers for the King's Club.

Within each colour group itself, the modes of operation varied with the age of the leader. The youngest leaders tended to socialize among themselves more. Several times, I reminded them that their role was with the children, but I also had to remember that I was like that myself just three years ago! Haha, so this is what growing up involves. At the same time, the younger leaders had less to organize than the older ones, hence they spent more time with the kids and got to know them better.

What I also found was that the younger leaders would forge deeper relationships with a smaller group of kids, whereas the older leaders would get to know more children but couldn't develop the same level of closeness with everyone. Both types of interactions are important in their own ways; it just feels frustrating when we realize that we can't accomplish both at the same time. At times like these, it's helpful to remember God's words through Paul:

A body is made up of many parts, and each of them has its own use. That's how it is with us. There are many of us, but we each are part of the body of Christ, as well as part of one another. (Romans 12:4-5, CEV)

Lookie, the Bible teaches about teamwork.

The week ended with a "banquet" on Friday evening. Here, the children came back for dinner and their final chance to win points for their team and the parents got to experience King's Club first-hand. It was quite fun watching the kids teach their parents their team chants!

Steph and Fiona decorating banquet tables

Chirp!

Jamie and the baboon monkey thing

Red rhino

Alas, these are the final photos from the week; I wasn't able to take any more once the kids arrived. Sean, who took most of the other photos, didn't go to the banquet. No matter, I'll finish off with some more pics from throughout of the week.

The tireless lunch ladies who kept us all well-fed

Steph's and Brittany's discussion group

Peter and his kids

Nyek

Concentration

Endangered species: Gameous equipmentus

Colouring station

Jamie, the musician who was sadly left out of the official video

Belting out the team chant

King's Club birthdays

And that's all, folks. Goodbye Blue Baboons! Farewell Red Rhinos! Adios Green Geckos!

The invasion of the little children begins

King's Club is an annual holiday program for primary school kids, run by North Beach Baptist Church; many of the participating children are from our own church, but we also advertise it around the local community. It began 9am Monday and finished 8.30pm tonight. I had originally decided to take a break this year, but somehow got myself talked backed into it in a conversation that went something like this:

Me: I won't be at King's Club this year.
Noah: What?! Why?
Me: No big emergency or anything. I just decided to take a break.
Sarah: You can't take a year off... We're really really short of leaders!
Me: How come?
Noah: All the senior leaders like Jo and Decky can't do it anymore cuz they've started working full-time. WE've been put in charge of an entire group now!
Sarah: C'mon... we need you. Don't leave us. Our age group is now basically the senior group, and there aren't many of us at all. You HAVE to do King's Club!
Me: ...
Me: *inner conflict*
Me: ...
Me: Ok, ok... I'm in!
Noah & Sarah: ^_^

(I go off to look for Laura)

Me: Hey Laura, I've been talked into Kings Club... you can put my name down. What do you need me to do?
Laura: Great! We need your expertise in making a fool out of yourself in front of the kids.
Me: (-_-"

As a side note, Noah's real name is Wynand, pronounced 'Vay-nahnd'. That kinda explains why we call him Noah.

Anyway.

We expected about 150-160 kids on the first day, but got 201 instead. That's the largest group we've ever gotten, and sure made things a tad bit more complicated! (40 extra heads might not seem like a large number, but just imagine a Malaysian classroom of 80 kids as opposed to the regular class of 40)

Nonetheless, the leaders -- both novice and veteran -- worked well together over the past 5 days to keep things organized. There were several hiccups as well as triumphs, but the details shall be left till tomorrow's post; old people like me tend to become half-dead after 5 days of kiddy action.

Before I leave though, I'll share some photos of the props involved. I can only wonder how long it took the Woodworths to construct the scenery and for Mrs Crosby to produce the costumes. If the lion, monkey and antelope look realistic, it's because they used to be alive; these are ex-museum exhibits. Also, the theme was officially "African savannah", but I guess green leaves make the place livelier.

Decorated stage

Green savannah

Roar

Face-off

Peek-a-boo

Explorer monkey

Toy monkey

A 7-foot-tall wire mesh/newspaper giraffe

Live animals. Clockwise from the front: Zoe the zebra, Mikey the monkey, Brutus the buffalo, the Cheetah, and the Lion

That's enough for now.

Need. Sleep.

Da Capo al fine

I attended my final piano lesson today.

I'm halfway through my preparations for my diploma, but still have a long way to go. Recently, I realized that I'm unwilling to invest all the time, money and energy anymore into taking things to the next level.

My trusty piano; a Technics SX-PX224

It's been a fruitful 10 years on the electric piano (I've never owned an acoustic one), and it all started when my mom dragged me to MASS Music in Tabuan Jaya after she heard that musical education is good for a child's development. I eventually started liking music and got quite good at playing, but never got passionate about it.

I won't let the piano simply collect dust, of course. There are still tunes that I enjoy, but exactly where I'll go with my music now remains to be seen. Time will tell, I suppose!

P.S. Above is the first published photo from my new camera. :-)