Yes, camp! Our annual must-attend-event. It was an exciting weekend packed with hardcore training and fun activities. But you would have expected that (duh!). You might not, however, have guessed the details. That's why, as usual, we have a blog post about our camp. This time, we are privileged to have Trinh Le, one of our members who joined us this year, give us a first hand experience of the camp.
******
The car swerved into a narrow, muddy road
and finally stopped before a two-storey wooden house. Here we were, the final
destination of our long-awaited winter camp. The semester had ended, the road
was calling, and our members at MUTW once again embraced in a whole new journey
to up their skills and celebrate winter. This time, Daylesford was the place.
We unloaded our
baggage and took a moment to check out the surrounding area. The front yard
looked up to a gently sloping hill, which grew grasses so green that we thought
it was spring. There were no cows nor sheep in sight, unlike our journey to
Daylesford.
It felt so
peaceful just looking at the green meadows. The sun, the wind, the chipping of
the birds. Whenever the wind blew, we could see the grass swaying like waves on
the ocean’s surface. On top of the hill stood a lonely tree, bracing itself
against the winter freeze.
“Look! A
trampoline!” Someone pointed towards the backyard.
“It can only
take a hundred kilos at most,” our host warned us, but a group of overexcited young-at-hearts
already encircled the springboard, bouncing and flying up high. Some even attempted
to do the front kick on air. Mind you, don’t even try if you’ve never taken
wushu!
I
opened the door to the warm and cozy living room. Those who arrived earlier
already settled around the fire place, a traditional kind fueled by wood and
complete with a chimney – the real deal! The spots around the fire place proved
to be our favourite in the following days.
That night, we
filled up our stomach with tasty home-made food by Chris the Chef, and filled
up our time with heaps of kungfu movies: Kungfu Hustle. Crouching Tiger Hidden
Dragon. Wushu the Movie. It had been a long and tiring day!
The day after, someone woke me up at
5.30am. “Quick! The Tai Chi class is on!”
It was cold and
dark all around. The only source of light was from the dim yellow bulbs on the
veranda.
There on the
front yard, a dozen people stood in lines practising Tai Chi in silence.
Slowly, smoothly, their hands floated like the clouds, and body like water.
Tiny raindrops drizzled from the sky.
After a few
warm-up exercises, everyone took off their jumpers and hoodies – the heat was
on! We moved to some serious fun: standing in pair on one leg and trying to unbalance
our peers.
Sweet winter
retreat. We escaped the hustle and bustle of the city, the terror of essays and
assignments, but we could never run away from the hardcore training. Tai Chi at
6, Wushu at 10, then Self-Defence in the afternoon. Eat. Train. Sleep. Repeat. We
could barely walk when night fell, but the feeling was unmatched.
The spotlight of the camp was the Avatar
Game, where we were divided into four groups: Water Tribe, Fire Nation, Air Nomads, and
Earth Kingdom, and took on challenges to become the Avatar – the master of all
four elements.
The challenges
were designed to evaluate our balance, speed, flexibility, technique and so
much more. Teamwork counts, “keeping cool” counts, and clever ways to bend the
rules also count.
“Welcome to the Air station,
where we test your lightness, grace and balance,” greeted the evil Airbender Haidee.
She instructed us to stand on one leg on a small brick, “You can choose
whichever stance you like, as long as it’s a Wushu stance.”
“Ok, let me try,”
Xingda jumped on the brick.
“Ready?” asked
Haidee.
“Ready for
what?”
She started
throwing bean bags at him. “You can either block or take the bean bags. But if
you fall, you lose.”
“Any bonus point
if we catch the bean bag and throw it back at you?” Veronica asked.
“No."
Haidee pretended
to throw a bag to confuse Xingda, then suddenly make a real hit. “Oops, looks
like you fall. But I’m so nice I will only minus half a point.”
The Air game was
so nice people kept doing it the day after for fun (without inviting the evil
Airbender Haidee).
At the Water
station, the no-lesser-evil Waterbender Ben asked us to maintain our horse
stance while balancing cups of water on our body. Other stations had their fun
challenges as well.
It’s not a camp without a bonfire, right? One
night, we gathered around a big fire in the back yard, roasting marshmallows
and singing our favourite songs. Everyone seemed to disagree on how to roast a
marshmallow to its perfection though.
“You
roast and tear off the outer layer to eat, then roast again. The idea is to
roast it as many times as you can,” Ciara said.
Some
roasted the candy until its skin turned brownish, then put it between two
crackers to make a s’more. Others just let the whole thing burn!
Somewhere in our tight camp schedule, we also played the charade for hours. As
old as time, this game never failed to bring unexpected joy and laughter.
“I can never
look at Hello Kitty the same way again!” one acclaimed.
It was such an exciting camp, with playing,
singing, eating and a lot of training. Don’t worry if you missed this one,
there’s always next year’s!
Trinh Le
******
This had been another successful camp. We would like to thank everyone who made this camp possible. Our gratitude goes to Ben and his family for their generosity and hospitality, and to Chris for boldly taking on the challenge of feeding a horde of hungry people - we were so fortunate to have such delicious food. A big thank you to Shan, Ben and Lok for taking the time and effort to train us. We would also like to express our thanks to Haidee, Ciara, Ben and Chris for organising this wonderful camp - we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves; Trinh for contributing to this blog post; Huiying, Charles and Trinh for taking great photos (and for taking good care of my camera). Last but not least, every single one of you deserve a huge thank you for supporting (even if you weren't able to attend) this camp and MUTW. We hope you've all enjoyed it and are looking forward to the next camp!
