Wah my back is aching :P Can't walk properly. Also got dozsens of mosquito bites. Eek. Itchy. Just came back from shooting camp today. Took up the whole weekend. So from last Tuesday to this Friday, I would have spent 11 consecutive days in school.

I think that this camp was better than last year's camp. On Friday, we went back to school and had a briefing. Yw appeared in the middle. Was very surprsed to see her. And quite happy. But was also quite sad. Cos could see that she really wished that she was still part of the team. That she didn't have to leave. She couldn't stay for too long. Wasn't allowed to. It was very sad when she had to leave. Lots of people cried. Some openly, some discretely.

Then we watched a movie about some rugby team. Terribly boring cos we couldn't make out a lot of stuff they were saying. Think Drumline would have been a better movie choice. Watched it during squash camp in sec 4 haha.

Day two, we had breakfast. Bought milo, had bread and peanut butter. Can't really remember the proper sequence of events. My memory is terrible for this kind of things. We did mental training. We sat in a circle in an air-conditioned room and had to stare at 3 really yellow-looking oranges sitting on a pile of books. Then we were suppose to visualise touching the oranges and peeling them. Visualise using our 5 senses. Thought it looked a lot like hypnosis. When mr lee first started describing the oranges, I had a terrible urge to laugh out loud. It was so funny lah. Think I would have died if I hadn't controlled myself. Anyway, I ate oranges almost everyday. So it wasn't so hard to visualise myself peeling and eating them. But the oranges he picked were so yellowish that I just couldn't imagine that they were sweet and juicy etc. From experience, they were most probably dry and juiceless. And I always try not to drip orange juice when I peel the oranges. So during that part, I was thinking 'Hey I eat oranges everyday, of course I have skill. Won't drip one lah!' Ah well. Yar. Ok carry on.

We also played some kind of treasure hunt before lunch. I helped out at a station called 'nian nian le' which means stick stick happy. Supposed to read a passage and get them to stick body parts together. Etc.

Found out that sh doesn't like to kill animals. Insects included. She would rather just let a mosquito suck her blood than smack it. So she said that whenever a mossie lands and sucks her blood, she would just try to shoo it off. But doesn't work most of the time haha.

After that, we went to the art room to see shu hui's art pieces. Saw lots of interesting art pieces in the art room. Could roughly tell the character of the person by his/her art work. I tried guessing a few. Not too far off. It's so cool. They're each allocated a wall where they can do up their art work. Like paste stuff, write stuff. Really cool. I like some of the words they write. First time I've been into the art room. Or anywhere near that area for that matter.

Then after lunch, we had some free time. Initially, I planned to do my bio. Cos we had to do this whole list of essay questions by monday. But some of them wanted to go play floorball. Had a lot of inertia. Dunno lah. As I get older, I get more relunctant to move around. Hahaha. So yar we were talking and sitting on the ground. Then they wanted to go play floorball. Gl didn't want to, kim and sh wanted (there were more pple present). So I thought that if I didn't go and play, then there would be this divide again. Was thinking and thinking and thinking until I was the only person still sitting on the ground. Then JS tried to coax me to play. Said that I could wack people. Haha jumped up immediately. ;) Ok so went to play floorball. Was quite fun. First time in a long time I get to tackle people and chase after a ball. Very fun to tackle haha. Just that had to avoid wacking people's legs. Which was quite hard to do. Played until I was quite drenched. Found out that js was actually quite a caring person (no hidden meaning). Then we had a bbq dinner. Lots of things happened.

Had a talk with qian ling(ex-nanyang j1 rifle) She wasn't feeling too happy. Couldn't mix with the rest from her group. So we walked to the side of the linkway towards nanyang and talked. Dunno lah. Think she really misses yw. Hope the rifle girls take care of her.

There was this small baby bird which fell from a tree. Some rifle girls found it and brought it to the range. It was named Peter. It kept chirping. Tried to feed it some softened honey stars but it wouldn't eat. Just kept chirping. Then we took it out of the range and went up to the bbq cos lee told us to join the juniors. So we went and ate and did the stuff you do at a bbq. Nearing the end of the bbq, gl and I decided to go drink some water from the water cooler at the canteen. Saw kim, sh, js and some others at a table looking quite serious. We were curious and went over. Found out that the bird had died. They didn't want to tell the rifle girls at first. Cos they knew that they would be sad (pls don't tell anyone anything I say here). But then charmaine, yunxiu they all came looking for the bird. Had to tell them in the end. Yx and c were the most affected by it. I couldn't understand why they were so sad cos a bird had died. It was only a bird to me. Up till now I still can't understand it. But I think it's just that different people respond differently to different situations. Something like that. We decided to go down to the field area to bury the bird. C went off. Think she had to be alone. The rest of us accompanied yx to bury it. We walked to the place beside the walkway. But halfway, yx said that she thinks the bird might not be dead. It was very sad. She refused to accept that the bird was dead and was afraid that we might bury it alive. So we took it to the light at the walkway and squatted down. She stroked the bird tried to wake it up. But it remained as still as ever. She put it on the floor and asked it to walk. But it never did. She tried to close it's eyes. Cos it looked alive with it's eyes opened. But they couldn't close. It was heart-breaking to see. But...I think I'm quite cold-hearted. As in...I didn't think I felt as much as I should have.

We brought the bird to the hill behind the track near the side gate to bury it. It was quite dark. We chose a spot and started to dig with our hands. We ripped the grass out and used our fingers to dig. We also used a short pole we found at the walkway to soften the ground and to deepen the hole. It was quite hard to do so. We had to dig millimeter by millimeter. It took quite long for the hole to be deep enough. Yx couldn't bear to bury it. She hesitated for a long time. They kept coaxing her and comforting her. She was weeping by the time she made herself put the bird into the hole. She then covered the hole with grass and we helped her. Filled it up with grass and soil and marked the spot with a small twig. She went onto the tracks and yvonne went to comfort her. We then slowly made our way down the hill. Yvonne and siew ee accompanied yx and we went to wash up before going back up to the linkway to watch the skit the juniors prepared for us.

During the skit, we were all quite subdued. When the first group of juniors announced that they were going to imitate charmaine, I thought 'Oh no! Bad timing man...bad timing.' Didn't know how she was going to react. Dunno lah. Cos if they were going to do that, she would receive more attention than normal. Not good, cos I was afraid that she might break down. Not good not good. Dunno, but luckily she was ok.
Felt quite helpless. I knew that some people weren't feeling too good, but I couldn't do anything to help them. I don't like that feeling.

Later that night, the teams played captain's ball with a basket ball. Was quite afraid that they would injure themselves. It was quite violent. And it's not like they can afford to sprain a leg or a finger for that matter. They're all shooters! It doesn't take a lot to get a shooter out of action. Didn't want to play cos I couldn't see as well. It was dark and I had't been eating a lot of carrots lately. I was also quite tired and sleepy. So my reaction time and alertness was reduced as well. Learnt that my captain actually cares for her shooters. Haha. She also saw that the game was getting too aggressive at times and wasn't too keen on the pistol girls playing.

Day three. Last day, war games. Was ok...at first there wasn't a lot of movement going on. So I walked around for a while and decided to go down to the place where people were getting resurected. Got wet on the way down. Gl koped a bottle from somewhere for me and I kept refilling it with cold water from the water cooler. So fun to give people a bath. Other people washed my hair several times too.

Then it was clearing up and debrief. The debrief took almost one hour. Then the captains and vice-captains had to debrief their own teams. What I remember most clearly is that after the debriefing by the captains, shu hui looked at the three of us and said, 'come here'. We were puzzled cos she looked so serious. Then she said, 'group hug!' Then we all hugged. Hahaha. So I guess our relationship improved after the camp heh. :D I think I talked to sh more in the past month than the whole of last year. It's cool to get to know your teammates better :)