Sapa Pt I
Hey, guys (:
I've been back from Sapa since Friday, and it's a little sad that I don't have the energy, memory or time to really go into a day-by-day account of everything that happened. I really want to, considering everything that happened.
It was a fun time, though. For our class (5.12), the physical service labour mostly consisted of climbing up a mountain to a school, painting a building of the school, going to another building of the school a minute's walk away, and teaching kids stuff in that building.
...it's harder than it sounds, seriously xDD I wasn't expecting it to be too much (some classes build netball courts and clean bays) but it really is a lot of work! We didn't paint any murals but just painting and sanding is hard enough, especially when the brushes are too big and you end up spattering everything with the wrong colour xDD And, even more strangely, the teaching sometimes gets even harder than the painting xP
-[time to do a things-I-remember post while listening to Glee and procrastinating Bio IAs]-
|| The train rides. In PotB and Anna Karenina, the train ride was a time of transition, progression, revelation... train rides are amazing in general. Nine hours, but somehow they were so fun <3 We slept less than six hours each night on the train. The rest of them were spent doing roleplays and having Brutal Truth sessions. (Never thought we'd ever have Brutal Truth sessions in this class, let alone this school, but whatever. It's funny what being confined in a cabin together in a large group will do to you.)
Waiting outside the train from Hanoi to Sapa. Hanoi nights are humid, even more so than Singapore (if that's even possible, or maybe it's just because I remember it more after Sapa), and so are the mornings, and afternoons, and... everything.
The inside of the train is spectacular. Seriously. They told us that we wouldn't have space to open our luggage, but they were totally wrong. It's probably because two of us stayed in a cabin meant for four, but still. (On an aside, the teachers psyched us out even more than that. They told us there wouldn't be hot water but there were kettles in both the hotels. And they told us there would be no Wi-Fi in Hanoi but it was the only place where phones could get any.)
|| The PotB roleplays. I'm uploading the videos of the ones in the Muong house right now, but they're taking forever and I don't have all of them. The train ones are the best, though. Less than fifteen minutes to figure anything out, especially when you haven't read the book before. (Oh yeah, also the absolute outrage Sir exhibited when he learnt that only SIX of us had brought the book, and NO ONE got arrested, and the TOUR GUIDE said that it was illegal but if it was in English it was fine :33)
I've grown wary of posting names online now that Sir's told us about how incriminating it can be in the future, but I think if anyone from 5.12 finds my blog they'll know who I'm talking about when I say a certain two absolutely brought the house down :3
|| The wasp's nest outside the restaurant.
|| The political debates in the train and while waiting for the train, and the SMS updates when WP won Aljunied and people yelled it down the corridor of the coach.
|| The random girls' gatherings xDD and the fail one where we tried to get the guys together too in the lobby and all we did was sit around and consume d-- green bean cake. (Honestly, we're all convinced that there has to be some sort of addictive substance in the green bean cake. According to reports [I still haven't eaten it] you can kinda get... uh)
|| The kids at the school, who are as cute as they are BAWS (boss, as in Like a Boss boss). Seriously. They can scale crumbling hills of loose red sand, beat a buffalo into submission, pedal boats with their legs, but at the same time they crowd around an LCD screen like it's a tear in the sky looking into heaven, grin over a origami butterfly, and follow the hand motions to songs they don't even understand. And, uh, dance to Canto pop songs.
|| The hotel rooms were awesome o_o Surprisingly, the Sapa ones were about twice as big as the Hanoi ones. Still, absolutely none of them could beat the Sofitel ones, which we could never hope to stay in. But we could wash our shoes in Sapa! Seriously! The restaurant let us use their detergent and sinks and after that we used hairdryers to dry everything. I don't know why I'm talking about this.
|| Most of us totally weren't prepared for mountain climbing. I am so glad I ended up getting those Merrell shoes. Lots of people wore old shoes or Converse-esque shoes. I would probably have fallen a lot more than I did (I always fall a lot without really getting injured. At least I don't get injured). And at these moments when we're forming a human chain and inching crab-like along a queue of slippery steps we look up and see children careening over crumbling rock slides and I wonder which is really the true civilisation here.
Okay it's been two hours and I'm getting nowhere. I'll continue this later.
Monday, May 16, 2011 @ 2:19 pm.
Hey, guys (:
I've been back from Sapa since Friday, and it's a little sad that I don't have the energy, memory or time to really go into a day-by-day account of everything that happened. I really want to, considering everything that happened.
It was a fun time, though. For our class (5.12), the physical service labour mostly consisted of climbing up a mountain to a school, painting a building of the school, going to another building of the school a minute's walk away, and teaching kids stuff in that building.
...it's harder than it sounds, seriously xDD I wasn't expecting it to be too much (some classes build netball courts and clean bays) but it really is a lot of work! We didn't paint any murals but just painting and sanding is hard enough, especially when the brushes are too big and you end up spattering everything with the wrong colour xDD And, even more strangely, the teaching sometimes gets even harder than the painting xP
-[time to do a things-I-remember post while listening to Glee and procrastinating Bio IAs]-
|| The train rides. In PotB and Anna Karenina, the train ride was a time of transition, progression, revelation... train rides are amazing in general. Nine hours, but somehow they were so fun <3 We slept less than six hours each night on the train. The rest of them were spent doing roleplays and having Brutal Truth sessions. (Never thought we'd ever have Brutal Truth sessions in this class, let alone this school, but whatever. It's funny what being confined in a cabin together in a large group will do to you.)
Waiting outside the train from Hanoi to Sapa. Hanoi nights are humid, even more so than Singapore (if that's even possible, or maybe it's just because I remember it more after Sapa), and so are the mornings, and afternoons, and... everything.
The inside of the train is spectacular. Seriously. They told us that we wouldn't have space to open our luggage, but they were totally wrong. It's probably because two of us stayed in a cabin meant for four, but still. (On an aside, the teachers psyched us out even more than that. They told us there wouldn't be hot water but there were kettles in both the hotels. And they told us there would be no Wi-Fi in Hanoi but it was the only place where phones could get any.)
|| The PotB roleplays. I'm uploading the videos of the ones in the Muong house right now, but they're taking forever and I don't have all of them. The train ones are the best, though. Less than fifteen minutes to figure anything out, especially when you haven't read the book before. (Oh yeah, also the absolute outrage Sir exhibited when he learnt that only SIX of us had brought the book, and NO ONE got arrested, and the TOUR GUIDE said that it was illegal but if it was in English it was fine :33)
I've grown wary of posting names online now that Sir's told us about how incriminating it can be in the future, but I think if anyone from 5.12 finds my blog they'll know who I'm talking about when I say a certain two absolutely brought the house down :3
|| The wasp's nest outside the restaurant.
|| The political debates in the train and while waiting for the train, and the SMS updates when WP won Aljunied and people yelled it down the corridor of the coach.
|| The random girls' gatherings xDD and the fail one where we tried to get the guys together too in the lobby and all we did was sit around and consume d-- green bean cake. (Honestly, we're all convinced that there has to be some sort of addictive substance in the green bean cake. According to reports [I still haven't eaten it] you can kinda get... uh)
|| The kids at the school, who are as cute as they are BAWS (boss, as in Like a Boss boss). Seriously. They can scale crumbling hills of loose red sand, beat a buffalo into submission, pedal boats with their legs, but at the same time they crowd around an LCD screen like it's a tear in the sky looking into heaven, grin over a origami butterfly, and follow the hand motions to songs they don't even understand. And, uh, dance to Canto pop songs.
|| The hotel rooms were awesome o_o Surprisingly, the Sapa ones were about twice as big as the Hanoi ones. Still, absolutely none of them could beat the Sofitel ones, which we could never hope to stay in. But we could wash our shoes in Sapa! Seriously! The restaurant let us use their detergent and sinks and after that we used hairdryers to dry everything. I don't know why I'm talking about this.
|| Most of us totally weren't prepared for mountain climbing. I am so glad I ended up getting those Merrell shoes. Lots of people wore old shoes or Converse-esque shoes. I would probably have fallen a lot more than I did (I always fall a lot without really getting injured. At least I don't get injured). And at these moments when we're forming a human chain and inching crab-like along a queue of slippery steps we look up and see children careening over crumbling rock slides and I wonder which is really the true civilisation here.
Okay it's been two hours and I'm getting nowhere. I'll continue this later.