Felicia's Last Excursion for 2008 - S'pore Discovery Centre

Dear All

Yesterday was Feli's last excursion for 2008. These excursions were part of S'pore's National Education (NE) programme. It was a long journey from the East (SACPS - her primary school) to the West (SDC). The journey was lengthened due to traffic jam as a trailer broke down on the highway and a EMAS truck was attending to it. Just imagine, a busload of impatient chatty noisy girls, playing hand games, singing, standing up (and being constantly told-off by the 2 teachers on board).

Anyway, I must say the trip is well-organised. There was a facilitator at SDC, name of Vincent, who explained what is racial harmony and the culture of the main 4 races in S'pore. He himself is a Philippino Chinese. As the group is big, 28 girls per class and there were 3 classes, each class and their facilitator had to flip-flop amongst the exhibits. So we didn't have time to cover the entire SDC. They played a team Q&A game on the exhibit, twice, wore traditional costumes and traditional props like the indian garland and songkot (these had to be swopped amongst the 3 groups - hence some delay there).

The highlight had to be Little George (LG). It was very funny when the girls said goodbye to him. When they yelled goodbye to LG, he replied goodbye. So some laggers yelled goodbye to him again, and the cycle was repeated until the facilitator from the next group "chased" them off so that the next class could have it's turn with LG.

It was a very tiring day as we also had tuition in the afternoon. It didn't help that the school bus trip home was extended due to returning to SACP to pick up a girl who missed the bus. The driver was pretty mad. But so were everyone else, including another parent volunteer.

Love Theresa