Today we had the Olympics games at LHCH. There were 2 sports, namely captains ball and tug-of-war. Similar to telematch, the different house colours competed with each other to see who the overall champion was. Even though the games were fairly new to the children, they could grasp the rules in a short amount of time. For the Olympics, we have placed a lot of emphasis on safety as well as fair play. The essence of Olympics, apart from winning, was about teamwork and sportsmanship. Hence we wanted the children to learn these values through the games.
After 3 hours of exciting games, the overall winner was the Red team. Afterwards, we had an India vs. Singapore Captains ball game. The hosts were really very fast and agile while we had more teamwork and strategy. In the end it was an even match though we lost 7 to 8.
Immediately after the Olympics was the Dinner and Dance where we had to prepare Singaporean food for the children. The aim of having Dance and Dinner was to let the children experience food from another country. We chose to prepare satay, sambal fried rice and green bean soup. It was a tall order for the members as we had to prepare for 200 people and most of us have no cooking experience. However, the children really loved the food and many of them had second servings. After dinner, the children taught us Bollywood dance moves.
As we walked back to our hostel, I was thinking of the amount of fun we just had and the many firsts of our members – first time being a referee, first time cooking for 200 people, first time setting up a barbeque fire, first time planning a sports event etc. This YEP journey was really a steep learning curve for many of our members as well as for me.
