Wahey!! I'm baaaaack!! And well I gotta say it has been one hellva experience for me. Actually I've been home almost a week now; just that my comp started to crank up & Dad had to reformat the whole damn thing. Thank God I was able to burn everything into a CD compilation so at least my precious collection can be revived.

Okay got lots to say about the trip to Surin, Thailand. Learned lots of stuff that I'd never thought I'd learn & gotta say, it's been insightful; actually it's really hard to express myself in words because the whole trip itself was kinda overwhelming, especially with the kids & damn, I miss them so much. Only maybe those who went knew how the feeling was. Not in any position to brag or whatsoever but in these kind of experiences, one has to see it to believe it & to feel it. Or else it would be pointless trying to explain how it was like.

Of course, we all got attached to the kids; those little buggers stole all our hearts the moment they arrived at our facility & I doubt anyone, myself included could ever forget those intelligent little tykes. None of our hearts were spared & definitely, we all cried our hearts out when they left our facility & out of our lives. Would we see them again?? Somehow the question lingers in the air; most of us definitely want to come back sometime maybe in a few years. Those kids we knew weren't just ordinary kids; these were the more intellectual & very bright kids who took whatever we taught them like ducks to water.

The only thing was that these kids were denied of the opportunity to expand their intellectual ability, which is about the saddest thing because their enthusiasm for learning English was really forthcoming & your heart really goes out to them. My partner was Kai Li from the Design School & our clan of little tykes included a kid whose parents recently divorced just before he went to camp, a self-proclaimed monitress whom at the end of the 4-day camp cried her little heart out & just refused to go home even though her ride was waiting; she just couldn'tstop crying as she hugged me tight on the last morning, a kid whom just at the first day managed to steal my heart & on the last day asked for one of my black bands as a remembrance while trying his hardest not to cry & a little guy whom really wanted to shine in his English & also couldn't stop crying on the last day as he sat on behind on the pickup with a couple of kids; he drew me a farewell note which was half in Thai & for the life of me, I couldn't understand what he wrote.

Of course in a class there'd always be one bad apple & mine came in the form of Beer, a 12-year-old kid who used his size as means to bully the kids smaller in size & age than he was. After all, he was the oldest of the bunch. And he damn well knew that I wanted nothing better than to kick the shit outta his bloody pants. Obviously I restrained!! Another thing I managed to expand while on the trip was my level of patiance & tolerance for certain people & certain things going around me. Sometimes, especially when things aren't going the way we want them to, I just managed to tune them out instead of listening to 2 different parties with totally different opinions take it out on each other in front of the kids. Which is quite a feat considering my reputation of having a very short fuse.

I guess my 'Cold War' with my parents was over the moment I said goodbye to them. It was then that I realized how important family was; I'd always believed in the fact but it was only then that I knew, really really knew how much they meant to me & how much of an importance they were. Even if you've got a thousand & one friends, if you don't have close bonds with your family then you might as well have no one. Family is everything & hell, it took me this long to really really understand it. No matter what, family would always be there for you. Not even once did I call home for fear of breaking down like a baby but we did keep in touch through SMS. Heck, even that was enough for me to tear up everytime I get an SMS from my sister through Dad's cell.

Surin is the poorest state in Thailand; the soil is not suitable for most types of vegetation except rice & therefore making it poor materials-wise. Looking at the Thai kids, they're just so content with their simple life when they can have more. Which got me into thinking about the differences between those kids here & the kinds we have at home. Suffice to say, it might not look like so to them but from an outsider's point of view, these kids really appreciate the very simple things in life; things we ourselves usually forget. Which is a very sad thing not for them but for us.

They can be so satisfied just by jumping around in a haystack & playing their traditional scissors-paper-stone game Thai version while we hurry down to Toys 'R Us to get our source of enjoyment. When I got home, I found that my sisters had just pestered Dad to bring them to Toys 'R Us to replenish their annual stock of toys. When they got home, each girl had a toy different from the other in their arm. I asked them why they had to waste money for these things because knowing my sisters, those toys would never see the light of day come 6 months. They'd be seen at the bottom of our chest, just they wait and see. My sisters' reply was that Dad had gotten a little extra income & therefore decided to give the girls a litte splurge.

True, it wasn't as if they bought toys everyday but after coming home from Thailand, I'd started to look at things differently. I could think of many different ways on how to spend the money in Thailand to help the kids. These days, I somehow find myself comparing things to how it was in Thailand when a situation arose. I'm not trying to sound like a prude or a prick but I found myself thinking, if you think your life sucks, try living like the kids in Surin. Singaporeans complain about the slightest thing; they're so pampered that they forget how lucky they are just to be born a Singaporean.

Summing the whole trip up without trying to offend anyone, I'd say it was truly an eye-opener. I'd only wish that some of my friends had been able to join me. Suddenly home wasn't so homey anymore. Not that anything had changed; it was probably me who'd changed. Scary as it is, experience contributes to the maturity of your growth. Don't know though how it is with the others. There's still other things I'd want to share but I guess it'll have to wait another day because right now I'm a roasting duck; I don't have my timetable & I have no clue of what my elective is this year. Thank God for Zhangs who told me what's in store for tomorrow; nearly had a heart-attack when I heard that tomorrow's night class. Ah, hell. Thankfully, the next day is an off day. Yessarh!! I finally got an improvement in my Maths. From a D-student to a B-student!! Yippee-yi-yay!!!

Unfortch for my other friends, they had to repeat Multimedia & sadly will not be able to join me in anymore lectures. Damn, I kinda missed the fun we had. Have to strive harder this semester, though. Don't want to end up like last semester where we studied last minute all the way. Heck, classes start at 10a.m today. Grrr...six-and-a-half hours of goddamned sleep. Gotta pass Mada his bloody black shoes,too...Hell. Hate it when school re-opens.

Laterz...
Lenny JC