RACH: 8 days KunMing trip

Okay... Sorry dear readers that it took me more than a month to update on everything.... i've been quite lazy and busy on last minute unimportant things. It's been months since i typed on my laptop keyboard and boy, i'm super upset at the rate i'm typing, it's so goddamn slow to me.... On the bright side, i've always been a fast typer so hehehe

Okay apologies aside, this is gonna be a super long post. Apparently i had typed everything out detailedly from day 1 to day 3 cause the bus rides in China were really long, taking at least an hour for reach ride, so i had plenty of time to type, these 3 days took me half an hour, i did try to continue but i got lazy and i really wanted to spend my time sleeping. Many things have happened in the past month (obviously), so i'll be splitting the posts up and there may be 2,3 or 4?? I'm not so sure myself.

Don't worry many pictures are awaiting ahead and i hope this super long post won't force one to enter one's sweet dreams!

2NE1's MISSING YOU IS PLAYING ON MY PHONE NOW! The song is so good omfg their vocals!!

Okay so this was before we boarded the plane for Kunming, AHLIAN

Day 1: So...... we had a 4-hour plane ride that was awkward as hell especially when the people who sat around us weren't close to us.... or let's just say that we don't even know one another. The plane ride was rather long, with the air stewardesses serving us food time and again and all we actually did was sleep and eat, which was rather boring.
We had dinner at some isolated area and it was really cold there. The food served were really salty and oily and we didn't finish 90% of the 10-course meal. Yup, it was rather bad and we wasted a large amount of food. We headed to the hotel and it was really dark and cold outside. There were security guards waiting for us outside the hotel. Upon reaching, they lugged our luggages in to the lobby and i was kinda shocked. Lights out was at around 12?? And i ended up turning in at almost 1.

This was the night of Day 1 and we bunked in Joanne and Francis' room cause all 4 of us freaked out and shit happened in Haziqah and my room, it was filled with so much insanity and superstition i almost went crazy.

Day 2: morning call was at 6.30a.m. and we were really tired. It was our first day at the local school and i was really excited. We left for the lobby after having breakfast and it was still quite early, so we decided to ask the receptionist whether we could have the password for the Wi-Fi and then headed for the school. We were so excited when we realised that we could use the wifi and were really making good use of it. We walked for around 50mins-1hour to reach the local school and were already panting the hell out of ourselves. I saw the children there and they were really excited to see us and you could see that their clothes were worn out and really dirty. Some of us really needed to pee and we headed for the toilet. What shocked us was that you could smell the strong stench about 3 metres away from the toilet itself. We had no choice but to use medicated oil to cover the smell of the toilet. However, you could still smell the stench when you are in the toilet and it's really really strong. There was no door, no flushing system, no nothing. It was just a canal in each 'half-cubicle' and a lot crap were in there. We mouthed '1,2,3' before squatting down to pee. It was really smelly and i couldn't take it. We met and interacted with the kids there but it was all weird and awkward as we had to speak in Mandarin suddenly and just play games. There wasn't much of a language barrier but it was really understanding their accents on the first day. We chased them and played with them to the extent that we actually perspired. Yup, i perspired in my thermal and it was really crazy. We didn't really teach the children much except playing games and coming up with impromtu games when we didn't know how to explain and play. Many of us got letters and no i received none at all, i was really sad. Nonetheless, i had to keep my spirits up and be energetic for the next two days to make a really impactful impactful in their lives. The day ended and the food (lunch cooked by the school teachers and dinner by hotel) was a lot better compared to day 1. The teachers brought us to Walmart, opposite the hotel and we were so excited, going to a mart at night in the cooling weather, and obviously it meant extra snacks for us! Yup, overnight and all. I'm lazy to elaborate.

This was day 2 morning, the air was so cooling hehe i was so excited after receiving wifi i took this photo

The path that led us to the children's school, filled with so much memories

First trip down to Walmart!

Day 3: same thing in the morning and we rushed down to the lobby right after having breakfast i was really excited to be able to use wifi there. Like, who isn't?? Even the teachers were desperate for them.

We headed for the school and started greeting all the kids there and tried to get closer to them and played more games. In the morning, we had to teach the children more about hygiene and our group was in charge of teaching the children how to wash their hands, the 8 steps and all, but we broke them down to 4 steps for the kids to understand. It was rather easy, they learnt really fast and mastered the steps by the end of the lessons (probably because we rewarded them with stickers). After the lessons they were really washing their hands at the basins near their classroom and outside the toilet. Apparently, there's only 2 basins in the school. We had lunch and went back to teach the children simple English words. There were 5 groups of us and 3 groups went to pluck persimmons and 2 groups of us were left to teach 4 classes of the children and we had to split into pairs. It wasn't easy as 2 of our group were Malays and we had to partner and non-mandarin speaker each and it was difficult to communicate with the children when we didn't know some of the Mandarin words. The teachers prepared us to go pluck persimmons next, near the school. We climbed a hill and it was very steep, i almost fell a couple of times and was really making a lot noise at the back cause i was really scared. There was a muddy area and NO, i didn't want to dirty my shoes. It was really cool. We had to use this really long stick, about 3 metres in length and use the split in the front of the stick to poke one the branches and then twist it, it was really fun when we had the strength to do it and bring it down. The feeling was really good. I guess the day ended similarly as the day before, walking back down to the coach and back to hotel for dinner. There was an impromtu decision and the teachers decided that some of us (i wasn't one of them) visit Walmart again to get necessities for the school. They spent a long time getting the things needed and even paid for the extra, how sincere of them! Things included were detergent for the toilet, mops, long brushes, soaps, hand sanitizers, toothbrushes and many more. Then again, back to sleep.

Day 4: (okay i was lazy to re-read the day 1 -3 entry so if i repeated.... i'm sorry!)

So that was the last day of going to the school, that meant no more long bus rides, no more walking up the hill, no more panting our asses away, no more long talks along away, no more playing with the kids, no more seeing them. I'm gonna sum everything up for the last day cause many things happened and i'm gonna write about the impactful moments, which i have at least 3 on hand. Firstly, if i did mention before, i received only 1 letter from the previous 2 days and on the last day i received about 15?? i forgot the number but it was really happy! partly because i received the most letters on that day (from what i saw, idek but yay) but mostly it was due to the content. Wei Shan and I wrote our names on the blackboard (YES THEY USE BLACKBOARD AND CHALK OMFG SO COOL I KEPT WRITING IT WAS SO COOL YOU DONT EVEN GET TO DO THAT IN SINGAORE), and i didn't want the kids to forget me so i went to each of them and basically asked "WHAT'S MY NAME???" and they replied "JIA XIN JIE JIE" omfg so cuteeeeeee!!! and yeah they have an accent and it was totally hard to understand them at first but as time went by we got to understand their accents and i felt cool (hahaha just kidding). For example when we say someone's name as "xiao li" they pronounce it as "xiao lei" hahahah. and yeah, all the kids remembered my name even hours after the last lesson. I was sooooo touched, they remembered my name, i'm not sure about now but at least they did, for that few hours and what's embarrassing is that i know none of theirs. I know this is random but i'm getting hyped up cause i'm typing faster and faster hahah. Back to the contents in the letters, most of them folded hearts and wrote stuff inside like "i love you jia xin jie jie" and my heart melted, awwww i did make an impact on the kids, i did it, i made a difference in the children's lives..... i was so touched. As we were preparing to leave, the children actually lined in in 2 straight lines (we were totally oblivious to the situation cause we were all looking in the opposite direction and were busy clearing our things up and so on. Shit happened when we actually turn our heads to their direction, we were all speechless and actually thought all the kids went home cause the last thing we saw was them running out of the school. We were so touched, i dont even know what hit my heart, all i knew was i wasn't the only one, but all of us were crying our hearts out, it was such an overwhelming situation that i didn't know what to say. If you can see, i took the most photos on the last day......

the kids when they were queuing up for lunch

all the kids were my favourites there, so this was the group of children i was closest to ??

all of them are the oldest in the school and they were the children i worked with mostly and i was obviously attached to the entire class. This group of boys was the most mischievous, they were a great bunch though, heheheh hugged all of them and had a group hug before this photo. It was cute how they were shy to say "i love you" awwww

LOOK WHAT JOANNE BEATRICE LEE TAUGHT THE KIDS HAHAHAH it's okay, #YOLO #SWAG

both of them are really cute, the one in red is Wen Jian, he's 7 and my cutie pie, i sound like a pedophile now hahahah but he's really cute omg love him so much he's so innocent.

3rd trip down to Walmart, kinda begged the teachers for that, only like 5 of us went?? can't remember, but it was one of the best moments, Jorine, Sam Lim and I were like in our own world, throwing everything into the our tote bags that we didnt have enough bags to hold our items Mrs Tan had to donate her plastic bag to us and it still wasn't enough HAHAHAAHA so much food and i even bought a few items for Sam but i spent less than 20SGD!!! the kisses were like $2+, it's like $4.95 in SG wtf. Oh and i kinda introduced everyone that cup noodle looking thing, it's actually powdered milk tea with nata de coco, you just need to add hot water in, it's a must have when you're in China!! i only drink from this brand cause it's the best!

mountain climbing, we stripped our thermal half-way up, THE KC WAY HAHAHAHA i was perspiring so much i don't even know

what happens when your friends get hyped up, the two of them are so cute hahaha

CAVE WOOOOOOOOOOO

MINIONS YAY

The bus buddies, we sat like that for 8 days, no joke. Everyone took so many photos of everyone sleeping, sigh
(left to right: Wei Shan, Me, Sam, Jorine) OH LOOK AFIFAH PHOTOBOMBED

woo must show off my photography skills

at the airport in China before boarding, Chiara hugged me so tight i couldn't breathe and my hands were shaking so bad, i almost fell HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH