Gopeng Leadership Camp

Leadership camp! I had leadership camp from 25/3/11 to 27/3/11 at Gopeng. I reach college at around 9am. All of the people that were going to the different camps got into their respective camp groups. We had our briefing and all before we split into our respective groups. We got to know each other by saying our name and 3 facts about ourself, where 2 are real while 1 is false, and the rest of the people have to guess the false fact. Later, we were randomly sorted into groups. There were 4 groups with 9-10 people. Mine had even number of people. There were total 38 people in our camp plus the 2 lecturers and 2 more facilitator. After we got into groups, we had to create our team name and team cheer before playing a game with our team cheer.

After lunch, we left for Gopeng at around 2.30pm in a bus. The journey took around 3 hours. Upon arriving at the camp site, out came lots of mosquito repellents. We visited the toilet/shower area too @@ The sign at the shower area:

I have no comment...

There were 4 dormitories (2 for girl and 2 for guys) with double decker beds and single beds (well I wouldn't really call it a bed, more like some wood and cloth). The are durian trees around too and it is durian season! So we had durian to eat but we have to watch our heads! In addition to lots of mosquitoes, there are also lots of cats around at our canteen (the place where we eat).

The rest of the first day was spent playing games and "indoor" activities (technically, we had no indoor). The most fun activity for me was Charades. It's a game where a person is given a word and he have to act out the word without making any sound and try to make the others guess the word. What is more interesting is we played in groups. This means that the 1st person have to act out to the next group member and the next member to the next member and so on. It was so funny watching the actions differ from 1 member to another.

The food were quite nice though the dishes were somewhat similar each day. Oh ya, for some of the meals, the team that ranked 3rd place had to serve everyone while the last place team had to wash all the dishes. My group lost twice :(. So the 10 of us had to wash about 42 dishes. Lol.

Showering... never shower at almost midnight at an outdoor shower that has only cold water. I almost freeze to death...

Slept around 12.15am, at the top of the double decker bed. Everyone in my dorm slept early this night. I too have to stop what I was doing and hurry off to bed to avoid disturbing them. Couldn't sleep for the 1st night though. There were no air conditioning in our dorms but the natural wind was cold! The rain must have made it even colder.

Day 2:
I woke up at 6.30am just as I planned thanks to my wake up call and alarm. Got ready for breakfast which was supposed to be at 7am but was delayed until 7.30am due to the people who came late.

After breakfast, we got ready for water rafting. Fortunately my sandals were allowed to be worn for the water rafting XD. No need to buy their rubber shoes. To go to the river place, we had to ride at the back of a lorry (there were 2 lorries). It was actually quite fun. We had to balance ourselves (since we were standing on the back of the lorry) while simultaneously avoiding incoming tree branches and leaves. Haha. With the addition of the nice breeze that blew at us, minus the dusty air of KL, it was really a good feeling.

For this activity, we had to wear a life vest, helmet and have our spectacles tied with rubber bands if we wore specs. When everything was ready, we had to jump into the river and let the waves push us along until a point where we had to swim to the shore or use rope to pull ourselves to shore. The water was quite cold since the weather was quite cooling. No sunlight at all and we are after all surrounded by trees. After that, we began our water rafting. About 3-6 people in a boat together with a person in charge I think. Mine had 2 person in charge together with a jie and another girl in front of my seat. We had to row the boat and follow the instructions that were shouted. Some instructions were actually quite funny; if the instructor shouts "Boom boom!", this means that we have to ducked inside the boat and hang on real tight. Lol. This is my first time experiencing water rafting and I really LOVE it. The instructors were really fun, and naughty. They pushed us into the water twice too. Grr so bad. However, there were a few other people in other boats that fell into the river during the "boom boom" part. We had to row the boat after them to help them. The girl in front of me fell into the water once too and I had to pull her back into our boat. Near the end of the river, we had to get out of the boat and lie back to form a line or something like that and just drift towards near the shore. If the water wasn't cold, it would have been much more fun.

After lunch and showering, we had high ropes. We needed to wear the safety equipment for every part. It consists of 3 section: rock 1, rock 2 and tree 3. Tree 3 was the hardest. First we had to climb up 90 degrees consisting of tires, wood, ropes and a mini ladder. Once high up on the platform in the tree, there is no turning back. Lots of small ropes, a mini tarzan swing, a small platform to swing from 1 tree to another, and lastly the flying fox awaits in front of you, all few stories high up. *faints* I gave up at the at the 90 degrees going up. Wanted to go for more but the phobia won over me. Heights is so not my kind of thing. Kinda disappointed I didn't conquer my fear. But I went for rock 1 though. It wasn't as scary though quite tiring as it consist more on rock climbing.

Our guy lecturer stop after the 90 degrees part. He wanted to come down. LOL. He actually stayed up there for about 15 minutes before finally moving on.

What I don't like about our female lecturer is that she kept on forcing us to do every single section. ZZZZ. She even went as far as saying that there is head count for all the section and we won't go back to the camp if all of us didn't complete. ZZZ. What a liar. Didn't care about her and walked away from there. The people in charge there said we could quit if we want (for tree 3).

Nobody is going to force me to do anything I don't want. Ever.

Night activities. It was 26/3/11 at 8.30pm. This means earth hour! And yes, we did observe earth hour!! We sat at the "indoor" tent with the lights off. Each of us had to say what we learn from the camp and something like that. A firefly flew around during the earth hour.

We also had other activities and our own practice for our group cheer. We had to do a longer cheer (about 1 minute long). Camp also have to stay back. Haiz.

The night sky was filled with stars... making the moment more beautiful that it was...

Slept around 1am.

Day 3:
After breakfast, we played a game where we had to transport marbles from 1 cup to another cup some distance away. The catch? Each of us are allowed to use 1 finger only and we cannot bend that finger. It was quite hard but my group managed 2nd place.

After that, we had to present our group logo and perform our cacat cheer. No surprises that we came in last. The other groups were quite good. One of them even had a rap. "Bah-bah-bah kut teh". LOL so funny.

Story telling was next. Well kinda. The guy lecturer actually wanted to tell us about something (about his true story) but he almost broke down and cry when trying to begin on his story. :( A few people tried to comfort him. He didn't managed to tell his story. Not sure if it is a good thing to tell to us either.

Everyone has a past...

We also had a card each where we have to pass it to our group members for them to write a positive thing about us. The lecturer ask us to put this in our wallet where we can look at it everyday and boost our self confidence. Well it is certainly a better way to boost self confidence than the toilet.

Finally we had some evaluation forms to fill in. Then, we had lunch, packed up and left Gopeng around 1.15pm by bus where I easily fell asleep from exhaustion.

***

I learnt a lot from this camp. Teamwork, leadership, helping each other, communicating with one another, respecting one another, seeing other people's strength, appreciating ourselves. All of our activities had learning outcomes. Though the camp wasn't completely everything good, I'm glad that I went for the camp. I brought home lots of experience and memories.

I also brought around 40 mosquito bites as my souvenir. There were about 12 on my left hand -.-

And also the card.

Oh and did I mentioned I LOVE water rafting? XD