My Malaysian School Life

2017 Character Camp

Aka A Camp For Kids Who Have Serious Discipline Issues.

Really, it's not a camp. I have no idea why is it called a camp either. You just go to school and do activities with some young adult-ish people and that's about it.

Either way, if you guys have read the past chapters, you'd have at least a bit of an idea on how bad am I on finishing my homework on time. Or at all, really. If you don't, then news flash: I'm very, very bad at passing up my homework, or doing it at all for that matter.

So it was pretty much no surprise that at the moment my class teacher received the news that she has to send a few of her students there, I was the first in line. Like seriously, there are at least 3 to 4 other kids in my class who are more deserving to be sent to a camp called "the Character Camp", but no, this woman just had to send me to this godforsaken camp. Like goddamn, the name doesn't sound bad in English, but 2017年品格营 sounds much more insulting than it's English translation.

Either way, I had to cough up what I remember was RM10? RM15? RM50? I don't remember. But whatever it was, I had to cough up money to go to a camp I didn't even want to go to at the first place. I coughed up the money, and went to the camp, and I get a stupid yellow t-shirt in exchange. Hey, that'd be a good brand name: I Went to the 2017 Character Camp and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt.

On the day of the camp, I put in my t-shirt, and got booted back to school on a Saturday morning. We had to sit in the hall waiting for the program to start.

Then I got stung by a bee.

Laugh all you want, but my school had problems with bees being everywhere most of the time. That morning a bee somehow landed on my head, I panicked and tried to swipe it off, and THE LITTLE ***KER STUNG ME. ON MY FINGER.

Either way, I reported myself to the teachers, and got my bee sting problem dealt with. Though throughout the course of the day I'd be yanked back to the nurse office by my new friends, who got increasingly concerned as my finger got purple as time passed.

Afterwards, the program actually started for good. And we were introduced to some collage aged young adults who were apparently responsible for us for the entire day. Then we were split into groups of eight to play fun and games or something with an adult each over the group.

It might sound fun now, but you must think of how ridiculous it was for me, an 11 year old, to get sent to a camp for what boiled down to "discipline issues", and then be greeted with an adult about ten years older than me smiling and waving like those mascots in a kid's show. And then we sat in a circle like kindergarten kids while drawing and colouring with said adult.

But then again, to say I wasn't enjoying myself would be lying.

Either way, the entire day went on like that. We played games and did some talks and all that while being treated like 5 year olds until it was time to go home. Seriously, it was an odd day.

Oh yeah, I had a birthday party to attend to after the camp that day. Actually, the birthday girl was also in the camp. I arrived at her house to see her still in the yellow t-shirt playing basketball with the rest of the kids already there. That day was a particularly eventful one.