COR'14 Event 8: Pre-Camp 2

As the trip to Nepal was nearing, the participants gathered once again during Pre-Camp 2 at Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADEAF) for another round of bonding session. Unlike the previous pre-camp, this version lasted for 2 Days and 1 Night and was filled with even more awesome activities. 

The pre-camp 2 began with some ice-breaking games which allowed everyone to get familiar with one another.  Soon after the ice-breaking games, one of the much anticipated secrets prior to pre-camp 2 was finally revealed! For the first time, all participants got to know their respective buddy for the Nepal trip. Each participant was given a slip of note that contained one feature about their respective buddy and they had to identify them solely based on that one information written on the slip of paper. The task wasn’t a hard one and most of us managed to find our buddy rather quickly, before the next segment of pre-camp 2 commenced. 

Photos taken after acknowledging their buddies.

In the next segment of pre-camp 2, all of us were split into 4 different teams to complete a series of games and activities at team level. The first games allowed us to witness the world cup fever arriving at the SADEAF as teams competed against one another in Human Foosball. Even though Singapore is not part of the 32 teams in the upcoming World Cup, we did see some talented kickers among ourselves as we strived to win points for our own team. 

Human Foosball

The team games continued at Parkway Parade after the lunch and in the first afternoon game, every team had to find the Chief Group Leaders (CGLs) who were roaming around the shopping more. To make the game even more challenging, each of the CGLs disguised themselves as a cap boy, old man, Tudong girl or Korean pop-star. The Tudong girl was proved to be the most challenging part in this game as only one team managed to find her in the mall!

From left: Cap boy, korean star, girl in Tudong and ah pek

The next game required teams to go around taking group photos with actions or objects that correspond to an English alphabet in sequence. For those who did not participate in this game or pre-camp 2, try doing this on your way to work or school! Alternatively, you may want to try identifying which alphabet do the following photos correspond to?

Guess which alphabet is this photo corresponding to?

After posing about 26 times, everybody finally did something “normal” in the shopping mall! Yes, it was the shopping time! However, instead of buying clothes and designer’s bags, each of the team was given a list of prescribed items and some extra bucks to purchase extra food from the supermarket. Everyone carefully picked the best food with the extra bucks given to them as this directly affected the food they would enjoy in the steamboat dinner later.

After the dinner, another most secretive secret was revealed by the CGLs again! This time, the actual grouping for the trip was revealed and everybody was very excited to know their group mates. The theme of this year’s camp is Silent Comedy and the theme follows a story about Charlie Chaplin looking for a sidekick to save the world from misery. Each of the group represents one comedic cartoon character (Oswald the Rabbit, Felix the Cat, Gertie the Dinosaur and Flip the Frog) and we shall see which group will emerge as the chosen one during our trip in June. 

During our upcoming trip, we will be visiting schools and one of our programmes there is Cultural Night in which we will be showcasing our unique multi-racial culture in Singapore to the Nepalese students through stage performances. Both the Camp Outreach committee members and our deaf friends will be working hand in hand to put up our best performance in Nepal. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect, and so we began our first Cultural Night practice session after everyone had washed up. The dancers were busy learning the dance steps while the actors and actresses were familiarising themselves with the script of the play. The practice session continued on the next morning after the breakfast and administrative briefing conducted by the programmers.  Just before the pre-camp was ended, all dancing and acting groups came together to give a combined performance. Despite not having a longer duration to practice, everyone still managed to give a rather decent performance at the end of the day. Of course, the standard will continue to improve given that everyone is so enthusiastic about it. 

 

 The pre-camp 2 came to an end as we took our as-usual-group-photo. One and a half day of event is definitely not enough for everyone to enjoy themselves fully. Fortunately, the actual trip is coming in about 1 week time. Let’s all look forward to a memorable and fun trip together!