Faith. Hope. Love.: 042: Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens: 25th Feb 2012

Today we enjoyed a unique day as the primers of the 12^th, a glorious walk in a lovely green garden. What garden? The Botanical Gardens of course! It was our way of welcoming the new primers into our family. We kick started the day by dedicating the day to God with a session of praise and worship, led by our two vice – head primers, Sophia and Thaddeus. It was a good way to start the day seeing the spiritual bonding between the new and old primers :D

Before the games

Worship and briefing

Off we go on our adventures~

Following the praise and worship session, we were split into our individual teams and introduced ourselves to one another. My team, group 5, comprised of several familiar faces and some unfamiliar ones, nevertheless, we introduced ourselves to one another so that no one would be a stranger. We took our time with the race so that everyone could enjoy themselves rather than stress out over the number of stations we completed. As such we started our lovely day in the botanical gardens after solving the devious clues left to us by the masterful games master Kenneth (Peanut). Somehow or another though, the park didn’t seem to like us being around as it greeted our group with a falling branch, causing some members of the team to jump, at least we were awake after that hehe.

Hello Audrey Podgie Pudding and Pie

....hehe...

After that, we decided to pay a visit to the Eco Lake for the next station as it was near another station anyhow. Thus began our relatively long walk to the lake of ecology which was filled with cheery laughter, even if it did involve a relatively large amount of uncertainties and asking “where are we now?” The relaxed pace and atmosphere helped us interact with the new juniors more as well as chat freely with our friends.

Group shot!

Local residents of the botanic gardens :)

Swan, tortoise, bird, Sophia the Stitch.

We decided to visit the station near the symphonic lake first as it was relatively near to the starting point and easy to find, unlike some stations (CK). There we met the awesome QYJ and the wonderful Zenn, the station masters for the turtlefish station. We kinda had an idea of what was to come considering we saw noel running around the lake bouncing around screaming turtle so the task wasn’t too much of a surprise. We split our team into 2 so that we had 6 people bobbing up and down with their hands above their heads going turtle while the other 6 went around making a fish with their hands and going blub blub. I think the residents of the lake approved of our actions as we saw them imitate us (or was it the other way round?). Anyhow, when we met at the center of the lake, we sang old mac Donald loudly so that QYJ and Zenn could hear us, thus clearing the station.

Yes Sebastian???

Do not feed the swans!

Kenneth.. the ninja.

Lari the tai-tai sitting with her bimbo friends and fanning herself with a leaf-fan

At the Eco Lake, we found the station masters Lydia and Brian who ran the bring-food-up-the-hill-with-weird-parts-of-your-body game. We took it in turns to randomly pick a type of food and method to bring the food up the hill and then executing the picked choices. Some of us picked weird foods that we could bring up ourselves while other had to work together with other in order to bring the food up the hill, because really, how do you carry unpeeled bananas up a hill by yourself? Nevertheless, it was hilarious simply because of the problems we had bringing the food up the hill and the ways in which we had to do it. Memorable events include PAM carrying Jian Rong up a hill :D

Debbie playing Brian and Lydia's disgusting food game

Dean and William catching ducks

(From left) Celeste, Jia Hui, Valyrie, Sophia

Penelo-PEA!

After disposing of the food that really couldn’t be deemed food anymore, we made our way to the next station at the red brick road, it was long and windy, just like the yellow brick road in the wizard of Oz, just that it was red, not yellow. At the end, we came across… a dead end. Turns out our resident Taiwanese decided to hide in the herbal garden for her station which we later found out via the magic of the telephone. We backtracked a little and found her and Leon at the station which ran a find and retrieve styled game. The team, save for two members, were given 5 minutes to look around the herbal garden and find 10 tennis balls and 1 ping pong ball but were not allowed to touch them. Once the time was up, the two members (Jeanette and I), were blindfolded and were led around to find the balls and ended up finding 1 tennis ball and the ping pong ball. That earned us a substation amount of points but that was only half the game. The next part involved tossing hula hoops a distance from the balls to try and hoop them to gain bonus points. Once again we took it in turns to throw the hoops and in the end, we ended up as the team with the largest gain in points for that particular station.

Audrey: "Hi Hsu Ying!" *HUGZ* <3

Alex: "Wow that's a fascinating specimen of a Jeanette."

As time was running out for the amazing race, we proceeded to the field near the symphonic lake to run around and relax. There we met up with Michael and Justin’s team where we played Frisbee and chatted with whatever time we had left. We had a good and enjoyable time as it was fun watching them play Frisbee only to throw too hard and have the Frisbee fly into the lake. This time of relaxation and fun not only helped the year 5 primers bond together but also helped us year 6 primers take our minds off the hectic life of IB and unwind for a while.

Keri: the next Soph.

Relaxing and Unwinding

At the end of the race at midday, we walked back to the entrance of the botanical gardens for debrief and for transport back to school. As we departed from the Botanical Gardens, I felt a sense of happiness as not only did we have a good and enjoyable time at the Botanical Gardens but we also were able to facilitate in the bonding between the year 5 primers. In addition to this, we old primers were also able to spend our remaining time in primers together meaningfully and create more cherished memories that we can share together.

Here’s hoping that we never forget our good times like this together!