Carol's Busy Schedule

Several weeks before last Friday:
At work, I was busy preparing for upcoming Mad Science school holiday camps. This involved preparing materials for various camp activities, preparing timetable, preparing camp notes, and thinking what the heck I was gonna teach. I also went out shopping so often after work to buy stuff for camps that now I am quite sick of shopping.
At home after work, I was busy preparing for Discovery Days that was to be at my church on Friday and Saturday. I was in charge of getting people to help do carnival game booths, prepare my own carnival booth, prepare songs to sing along with the kids and think of actions for the songs (and remember all of them too, of course). I also had the bright idea of singing the High School Musical theme song (We're All In This Together) for DD, as this is like the Disney movie that all the kids are going nuts over these days. I also had the brighter idea of asking some of my church kids to dance along with me, and initially although I thought of having only 4 dancers, so many kids wanted to join in, I ended up with 8. So I also had to spend a few days to learn the dance. Which involved a lot of playing and rewinding of the movie vcd (which I borrowed from one of my church kids) in order for me to scrutinise all the dance moves. Then I had to teach the dance moves to my church kids. That in addition to learning the actions for the other songs I was gonna sing for DD. And then I had the even brighter idea of doing a Mad Science show for DD. Which meant more work.
During this time, I also came down with a bout of food poisoning, where I had to take MC half day, but went back to work the next day coz' there was too much stuff to do. Then I came down with colds a couples times over the past couple of weeks. And since my bout of food poisoning, I would every now and then feel like throwing up whenever I ate oily or dairy foods. I think it was also because I was so busy running around like a mad chicken doing stuff. Apparently, it wasn't just me, but one of my other colleagues felt it too. Fortunately, I never actually chucked up anything.

Last Friday:
Discovery Days was on, and I had to wake up at 7am or so to be at church by 7.45am. I spent the first half of the day doing the sing-a-long songs with the kids. And due to the actions, it involved a lot of jumping around on stage. By the end of the 3rd song, I was ready to konk out, but I couldn't coz' I had to help take care of the kids for some games. Then somehow or another, I also ended up having to keep about 30 of the kids busy by guiding them to complete their activity books. So I had to use the mike and talk to the kids for about half an hour, guiding them to find the answers for the activities, and of course had to deal with some noisy kids.
By the middle of the day, I was so zonked out, I took a time out after lunch and slept on the couch at the back room of the church. And then some of the kids found me and decided to amuse themselves by poking me here and there. And I was too zonked to bother to react. Fortunately one of my friends came in and chased them all out (Thank you, Kelvin!). After my short-lived break, I had to set up my booth for the carnival games, which turned out to be quite a popular game with the kids. Which also meant I was kept quite busy too.
Later on, there was some spare time, so I was asked to do song leading again to keep the kids busy. One of the church aunties also decided it would be nice to have the kids to do a small presentation for their parents the next day, and so I had to teach them the actions for one of the songs til they all got it. So there was more jumping around there for me.
Towards the end of the day, I started sneezing badly and came down with a bit of cold. So I went off home.

Last Saturday:
It was second day of Discovery Days, but I was not there in the morning as I had to go back to office to finish off some work. Fortunately, I had recovered from my cold. And the kids were going to the zoo in the morning, so as much as I wanted to go, I had to opt out. I did go back in the afternoon, once the kids got back, and I performed my Mad Science dry ice show. And at several points during the show, whenever I went off stage to show stuff up close to the kids, a bunch of them would crowd around me wanting to have the first try. And yes, I kept telling them to sit down and wait for me to come to them. Unfortunately, some kids fail to understand the meaning of obeying instructions. So essentially, I was mobbed by the kids quite a few times during the show. But they enjoyed it, and that's the important thing.
Later on, I practiced the song with the kids again, and before they went back, they performed it for their parents, who came for a tea party at the end of the event. After that, all the kids went off, and I had my own private dry ice show for the big kids, a.k.a. the youth and young adults, at the back room of the church. Apparently, even the big kids like to play with big carbon dioxide filled soap bubbles. :P
So all in all, for DD, it was a really busy but enjoyable time. I'm glad it went well, and a lot of non-Christian kids learned about the gospel. And I'm also glad it's over, so I can get some rest after work!

Last Sunday:
I was suppooooosed to perform a birthday party show at One Utama in the morning, but went there and it turned out that the show was moved to 4.30pm, and I dunno where the miscommunication came from. So I went shopping for camp stuff (again!) and then went to office to prepare more camp stuff before going to the birthday party later on, where I had to help make slime fore about 12 kids to take home. Yes, it's as messy as it sounds. After that, I went home, but not before taking 5 minutes out to play Para Para Sakura at the arcade (where I played two games and lost on the 3rd round each time. I think my arms were tired from waving around too much. :Þ)

Yesterday (Monday):
My company had our first school holiday science camp for kids at the National Science Centre. I had to wake up at 6am to be at office by 7am and help the instructor for the day pack things into the van for her camp, then go there and set up everything for the camp, then I was there til 5pm helping out. Fortunately, there were only 12 kids, and they were reasonably well behaved. And it was a simple and fun camp about flying machines, where the kids got to make their own paper aeroplanes, paper boomerangs, wooden planes and some other flying stuff. And the kids all decided to use me as target practice for their boomerangs at one point, so I also just let loose and had fun running around with them.
Once we were done, we packed up and headed back to office, where we had to prepare for our big day the next day (which was TODAY) coz' we were going to run 3 camps concurrently at the IBM tower. And there would be 50 kids at each camp. Which means we had to prepare a LOT of materials. So I was at office for quite a while to prepare stuff. And my colleagues wanted to go shopping again and asked me to go along, but in the end, I decided to 'fung fei kei' them. And this was because I had to go back and pluck flowers (in illegal places. Don't ask me where. Hehe) to be used for my camp. So I was busy up at night plucking flowers around my area, after which I went home and finalised the timetable for my camp before crashing into my lovely bed.

TODAY:
I had to wake up at 6am AGAIN to be at office my 7am and do all the packing and transporting and preparing for my camp at the IBM tower. At 9.30am (half an hour before the camp is supposed to start) the kids start coming into the area. Did I mention that the 50 kids I was teaching were all between 4 to 6 year olds? And some of their parents decided to 'kaypoh' and stay for the whole camp to help their kids (or maybe just had nothing else to do at work). So not only did I have to deal with controlling 50 little kids, but also dealing with noisy parents standing around. Ugh.
The first half of my camp went ok. The kids did their activities and sat quietly while my helpers and I went around helping them do stuff. But after lunch, I'm not sure exactly how much sugar their parents fed them, but they turned rather uncontrollable and were running all over the place. Didn't help when I had to do Plaster of Paris casts for them for one activity, and the plaster made a huge mess, so I couldn't watch the kids and that made them go even more haywire. I dunno what the other parents or IBM workers there were doing. But I was too zonked again to care, so I just finished off my plaster casts, finished off my camp, packed up everything and went off.
I thought after a hard day's work, we would all just chuck all our stuff at our office then go home to get a good night's rest. But for some reason, my supervisor who sometimes seems to get PMS (he's a guy, by the way) made us stay back at office to discuss who was going to do what for the next one week. And he was giving me a silly lecture on what things I had to do for another camp I am going to run this Friday at Malaysian Agriculture Park. I dunno why he was talking to me like I was retarded or something, but he said some stuff about making sure when the kids go to toilet, they need to follow an adult AND be with a partner. And also some stuff about giving them cleeaaar instructions on what to do and where to go and this and that, to make sure they didn't get lost. Right. And all this major security for a current grand total of 6 kids going for my upcoming camp. I suppose he was lecturing me because the kids of my camp today were running around a lot, and he thought I didn't give them cleeeaaaar instructions on what to do in order to keep them under control. He didn't seem to take into consideration that I was handling 50 small 4 to 6 year olds, and there were a bunch of 'kaypoh' adults in the room as well making as much noise as the kids. So when I did give them instructions, not all 50 kids would've heard everything I was saying.
Anyway, I was pretty annoyed with my supervisor for giving me such a dumb lecture, but was too tired to say anything. And my other colleagues were all also ticked off with him too for making us stay back to discuss stuff which we could've discussed tomorrow. We were all just waiting for him to let us off. And the funniest thing was that he then asked much longer we were planning to stay at office, and if we were staying, he would order pizza for dinner. All of us said goodbye, grabbed our stuff and ran outta there as fast as we could.


So yeah, after so many weeks of prepping for DD and camps and stuff, and finally having one night free to blog stuff, all I just wanna say now is "WOOOOOOOaaaOOOOOaaaaOOOOOOYAAY!".
Ok, stress relieved. Time for bed.