CNY Celebration

This is way overdue. Hahaha, so sorry. Was getting lazy and my pictures were stashed somewhere after I sent my phone for repair.

So... Special thanks to Rishi for offering his hall's TV lounge and preparing food for the steamboat on 5-Feb-13! =)

Please forgive me for the cui photographs. Here's some decent photos, the rest of the photos I've taken are sort of too abstract. Hahaha

Food prepared by Rishi and.. others maybe? (I can't recall)

 

Thanks for joining us as well, Block B! You can see your centrehead, Lihui eyeing for the food afar. *-*

捞鱼生lo!

 The chillax one corner trio!

The serious Mark (Trying to webcam with Eugenia who was on Exchange)

This was still when Block D and F were still one block. =P 

Nevertheless, we're still one RSP Youth! 

-Chee Wei

Happy Chinese New Year!

For our first Cultural Exchange event within the Boys' Home, we have organised two slightly different Chinese New Year celebrations for Block D and Block F respectively. Here's the respective accounts from our volunteers from the Wednesday Block D and Thursday Block F celebrations.

-Chee Wei

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Block D (Wednesday, 30th Jan 2013)

This is my first time hosting an event in youth. It was a rather fun and new experience for me, especially since we are introducing the Chinese culture of celebrating Chinese New Year to the boys who are from different races. The planning stage was for us to brainstorm for ideas on how to make the presentation of the Chinese culture interesting and appealing to the boys. Hence, we came out with the idea of making the boys stand when the speaker mentioned certain keywords and rewarding them with points for it.  At the end of the talk, we also had a round of the Q&A sessions whereby the boys get to answer the questions regarding cultural meaning and practices of Chinese New Year.  At the end of the event, the winning team gets to choose the flavour of the pizzas they want to eat.  After which, we had some get-together time with the boys where we sat down to eat the pizzas and interact with the boys.

Through this session, i got to know some of the chinese cultural meaning behind certain traditional practices that even i was not aware of! I also get to interact with the boys better.Overall , it was a fun and meaningful experience to share my own culture to the boys with different cultural backgrounds and watching them join the fun!!!

-Ying Siew

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Block F (Thursday, 31st Jan 2013)

新年快乐 ！ 31^st January marked our first festive session of 2013 with the boys at Blk F where we celebrated for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Instead of the usual dark-coloured WSC tee, volunteers were dressed in festive red this time round. As per normal, there was loads of chattering on the bus as we made our way down to Boys’ Home.

The session started out with the boys and volunteers being divided into 3 groups. Since it was a CNY celebration, red packets (hongbaos) could not be missing. Volunteers then handed out hongbaos to the boys that contain gold-wrapped chocolate coins (the very typical replacement for cash :P). The emcees for the night - Shark, Jacky, Glenda and Zheng Wei, later covered a detailed presentation on the customs and norms of CNY, as well as interesting facts about the Chinese Zodiac. I guess everyone had really listened attentively because hands were rising all the time during the Q&A segment. It was also impressive that many non-Chinese boys could rattle off CNY greetings in Mandarin! Some of the boys and volunteers also went up to share how they would be spending the CNY holidays, and indeed most of us would be spending time with our families and friends.

Then came the highlight of the night – supper! It was everyone’s favourite (or at least my favourite brand of pizza :D) Sarpino’s and KFC! Despite the long day at school, everyone was in high spirits and time was spent chatting and catching up with the boys. The food were quickly polished off and to our dismay, it was soon time for the volunteers to leave. The mess was quickly cleared through the efforts of everybody and we proceeded to bid our farewell to the boys.

Overall, it had been a fun-filled night and I certainly had enjoyed myself. Much thanks to the emcees and organisers for planning this! J Perhaps during Hari Raya, we could get the Malay boys from Blk F to introduce their culture to us instead!

-Ruo Yu

A very big welcome to all the new volunteers to Youth Block D! :D

Block D officially welcomed its new volunteers into the family over the Festive Season. There had been a slight delay in arranging the new volunteers' briefing talk due to unforeseen circumstances, thus resulting this late entry.

During the First session at Block D with our new volunteers, the seniors were there to guide them along and orientate them to the place. After 1 round of brief introductions, we played Ice Breaker games, such as double whacko together with the boys so that we could get to know each others' names in a fun way. Though the place was a little quiet in the beginning with some of them being shy, the boys never failed to amuse us with their jokes. Very soon, the atmosphere became less tense and it was good to see the new volunteers mixing around well with the boys; the boys showed much enthusiasm in getting to know them as did the volunteers.

After Session ended, it was time for the volunteers to have our routine supper session together at Sheng Siong. However, this supper session was set to be a special one. In keeping to the spirit of giving during the festive Season, Block D had its very own Christmas Gift Exchange session. Everyone had been pre-notified to purchase a gift of about $15 or hand-make a gift for this gift exchange. Although participation in this gift exchange was optional for the new volunteers, it was indeed great to see all of them participating eagerly.

Poker cards of 2 suits were given out to all the volunteers who were present and each of us was to pick our desired gift according to the number on the card we were holding. After everyone had picked one gift, it was time for the interesting part where volunteers were given the choice to swap their gifts with another volunteer. The day ended happily with a photo-taking session of all of us with our gifts over the night backdrop.

Once again a very warm welcome to all the new volunteers and hope we could enjoy the future sessions together with the boys as one happy family! :D

-Rishi

Telematch @ Block F!

17 December 2012

*yawn* early morning to wake up during the second week of holidays for what?! 

Well, it was actually for the telematch! =DDDDDDDDDDD Volunteers had to meet even earlier than Saturday sessions because we need preparation for the event. So early in the morning volunteers went into the home in preparation for the event. Well, first thing first, WATER BOMBS *evil smirks*. As part of rainy day plan, our dear boss came up with the idea of adding dark soya sauce into the water. Despite the scorching hot sun shining upon us and not to waste resources, WE ADDED IN DARK SOYA SAUCE. MUAHAHAHAHAA. Ok, its pretty disgusting as the smell of the soya sauce floods the early morning air. =/

After the preparation, we gathered the boys and split them into 2 teams named Dragons and Hornets. Volunteers were split evenly between them. It was difficult to get the boys to start playing the game and everyone was reluctant to play. However, after much encouragement, the boys start to willingly join in and started to enjoy themselves! It was a heartening sight to see. So to start off, the first game was called U-tube. Representative from each team had to up the bet of adding either dark soya sauce, vinegar, ketchup into the water. After bet was made, the mixture was poured into the tube and each player holds 1 end of the tube and blows into it. So, as expected either one will have the gooey mixture into their mouth! *yuckss* =( hahaha.. I had a lot of laugh watching thou =P Well, at the end, Dragon team won! *hurray!*

Next game, was rolling on the canvas sheet. The losing team had dark soya sauce, vinegar added into the canvas sheet while the winning team had normal water on the canvas sheet. All members in the team had to flour themselves white and roll on the sheet to clean themselves up. The fastest team wasssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss, DRAGONS! ^^

Next, the game I call it exaggerated scissors paper stone. On the canvas sheet of yucky mixture of all the condiments, representative had to army crawl along the canvas sheet and play S,P, S. the losing player needs to crawl across the whole canvas while the player stands and leaves.  After a tough fight of 11 games, HORNETS WON! WOOOTTTSS!! =D

Lastly, and the most awaited one, WATER BOMB WAR! So the main aim was to just throw water bombs at opposing team. After I started the game, I start to feel unsafe as I feel people targeting me!!! >=( den I went to hide with Swee Ying. Hahaa. Menacingly Qing Feng came with a water bag and threw at me. HENG I siam fast enough. Ahhaaha.. well, watchin the whole game was quite interesting as I was literally watching some romantic encounter unfolding. =P hahaa.. those who know, knows. <3~ Well, the  boys had a fun time playing with each other and with the volunteers. So finally to decide who the winner is, we had a game of plain scissors paper stone and Dragons won. So they were awarded notebooks. All participating boys were given a pen as a gift of participation.

Watching everyone having such a great time, the fatigue from climbing out of bed early in the morning, perspiring under the hot sun was all worthwhile. The experience in Block F was great and I look forward to much more interesting events with them! =D

Till den,
Aimin! =)