Habitat for Humanity - Bali 2010!!! Part 2 'Week 1 in Bali'

SOOOOO On the second day, I woke up at 7 in the morning, without the help of an alarm clock, IN THE HOLIDAYS LOLWUT!!! I have no idea how I did this, but I continued to do this throughout the rest of the trip (except the last day, where we had to wake up at 5 to pack...). Breakfast was served at 7:30, and included a lot of random stuff... like toast, bacon, mie goreng, rice, water melon... bread :)

After breakfast, I had a shower.. just for the sake of it.. But we still had time left, so we turned on the tele and watched HBO (And English speaking Indo channel that showed English movies) Can't remember what was on though :\ When it was almost 8:30, the time when we had to meet up at reception, Song and I got our stuff ready, sun screen, camera, sun glasses... and headed for the reception (This pretty much happened everyday. Except after the first day, I started getting lazy and started using other people's sunscreen and insect repellent. ^^)
There were 2 build sites, namely, site 1, and site 2, so we had to split up everyone into 2 groups. The groups are as follows (I have no idea how they are evenly distributed, but I'm glad that I was in the group I was assigned)
Site 1: Montie
Eugene
Song
Leo
Myung Jee
Angie
Site 2: Bromwyn
Jake
Jenny
Huong
Miji
ME!
We went into random vans, and then all of us went to site 1, where we saw the home owners there, and looked around. Then we all went to site 2, where group 2 were supposed to work. After a brief intro, and tour of the place, site 1 people left for their site, and it was just site 2 peepz left.
I have no idea what went on after that, or what site 1 people did, but site 2 people went STRAIGHT to work.
We had a few jobs that day. Mixing cement with sand and water to make concrete was the first one we had to do. However not everyone was needed (Rejection), so Jake and Jenny did that. Jake became the mixing person for the rest of the trip :\
I ended up having to move rocks from the forest nearby in a wheelbarrow to the foundation of the house. Tiring as crap == I was literally dripping sweat while lifting rocks. But eventually I got some help from Huong :P And also, there were these 2 kids that came and helped us! They were like sooo cute! ^^
At 12, we had an hour lunch break. We ate Indo packed lunches, which was probably more than we expected. I can't really remember what we did during lunch on the first day... probably just bummed around (Eating took up only 10 minutes...)

For the rest of the afternoon, we just proceeded with our jobs, mixing, moving, bending wires... (omg... on the first day of work, I managed to create this long cut down my right forearm.... zzzzz). We also witnessed one of our Indo drivers climb up a coconut tree to get a coconut!! :O with no help from any tools or anything. PRO

When we got back to our hotel at around quarter to 4, we found that there wasn't that much to do... so we went swimming in the ocean!!!! The water was actually REALLY REALLY warm :O and quite nice as well. The seabed however was a bit icky and slimy, but that was all good.
Yeah.. and then we went swimming in the pool, and did nothing for like the next 2 hours.. The site 1 people came back from their work, and some of them joined us in the pool. I left early cos I was still kinda sick, and the water started to get cold (i.e. we just stood around doing nothing and yeah...)

I went back, took a shower, and watched TV until dinner time~~
For dinner that day, we went to the 'Cozy Resto', which was also where our lunches came from. There we had yet another Indo buffet. I ordered an 'Arak Attack', a lemon drink that turned out to be a little 'slutty'. The teachers never found out :P
We also had this dance performance thingy next to our table O.o.. so epic.. especially his facials :O
We went back to our hotels, and just did nothing for the rest of the night... We hadn't really split up into our small groups yet.. SOOOO... I went to bed like a good boy :D
On the second day, Huong was traded with Myung Jee! Which was pretty awesome cos she's super cool and buys heaps of food (and uses up all my iPod power ==). From this day forth, Myung Jee became a loyal member of Site 2.
The routines were similar. I.e. Get up, Breakfast, Shower, Go to work, Lunch, Bum around (I usually listened to my iPod, or someone else would steal my iPod and use up all my battery, while the others just sat around and meh), Get back to work, go back to hotel, and just meh.. But on the second day, I think that we all went to Mie Goreng (Yes that's right! REAL MIE GORENG IN INDO!!! LULZ).. and TBH.. instant Mie Goreng tastes better than the real stuff.. :\

That was Wednesday... On Thursday (Our last full working day for the first week), the same routine pretty much happened. The jobs at the site were different every time though. We now had to clean 1000 tiles, paint them with cement, and then paint them with red afterwards... I don't even think we got that done by the end of 2 weeks ==.. There were also other jobs like digging up dirt, and wheel-barreling them over to the house. It was lunch time, and then we went back to work.
But instead of going straight back to the hotel after work, we went to this Gitgit waterfall, which was AWESOME. When we got there, we change into our swim gear, and attempted to stand under the water fall, which was FAIL. The water fall wasn't that high, but the water still fell really REALLY hard, and just below was a huge rock, so the water his the rock and bounced off, hitting us, and it was PAINFUL!! But more like a massage but still :P great fun. But we only stayed for a while.. so back to the hotel we went

Btw... during this whole trip, Jake was overly obsessed with mocking/being sad to... meh nvm... It's quite interesting, but I don't think I should put it up here.. if you wanna know, then ask :\
Nothing much happened in the first week really :\... More stuff happened during the weekends and the second week, so stay tune!~

Habitat for Humanity - Bali 2010!!! part 1 'Leaving NZ, and arriving in Bali'

SOOO!!! Hey guys~~
I finally got around to writing these posts, which I should have written a while ago, but now that I've started, I feel the obligation to finish this account of one the most amazing trips I've had for a LONG time.
Part 1 - 'Leaving NZ and arriving in Bali'
Part 2 - 'Week 1 in Bali'
Part 3 - 'Weekend in Kuta'
Part 4 - 'Last week in Bali, and leaving for NZ'

On the morning that I was to leave (Plane flight was at around 11 at night), I woke up and felt like CRAP (probably because I pulled an overnighter the night before, on the day of Stage Challenge - Note to self, not a good idea). I had a pretty bad fever, a headache, and lost all the energy in my body. I could barely walk. My parents were so worried that they were like 'OMG. Don't go to Bali and just stay here in NZ'. Good thing I didn't take their advice. By the end of the night, I still had the fever, but my headache had gone away courtesy to countless Panadols and other random pills. I finished packing everything I needed (a lot more medication than I had anticipated), and off I was to the airport!

Even before I got inside the airport, I met up with Song outside, and if I recall correctly, Myung Jee was also outside and the drop off area, unloading her luggage. We lugged our stuff into the airport, hoping to meet up with everyone else. (Got to the airport at 8.. a bit early IMO but we had to for various reasons that should be familiar if you have asian parents) There I encountered a group of Japanese students who were going back to Japan for the holiday. We took some photos just for the sake of it, and then we finally saw our own group. The group going to India for ECC was also there.
We checked in, checked in our luggage, got our boarding passes, and went off to the boarding gate. We stayed at BK for quite a long time, because there was nothing to do, and everyone seemed a bit tired from... well it was like 11 so yeah.. Eugene got a bad piece of chicken in his tender crisp, so he got a refund, and some free fries :P

Finally it was time to get onto the plane to Singapore (We went from Auckland to Singapore, then Singapore to Bali. In other words, we wasted another extra, i'ono what, 5-7hours on the plane. But apparently there is no direct flight from Auckland to Bali sooo :\). I was sitting next to Mr Montogomerie, our 'supervisor', and Leo (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Leo also did the overnighter, and he also had a fever and headache and crap... what have we learnt? Don't do overnighters after stage challenge). And then was the long long LONG flight to Singapore. (Btw, I was wearing A LOT cos it was cold in NZ and I was sick.. sigh.. bad idea much?)

When we finally got to Singapore (the flight was delayed by 40minutes because they needed to switch 2 tires...), we had to go directly to our next boarding gate. And then it was another long long flight to Bali. After we got to Bali, we did a Visa on arrival! Which took a while. And also, the customs visa thingy also took a while. So we spent like 1 hour standing around, doing nothing.. in the heat (Bali airport isn't very well built. It's efficient, and does the job, but that's about it).

When we got out of the airport, we were greeted with a gush of hot air. Plus I was clothed for the winter... fail much? Our hosts for the trip can over and loaded our luggage into the van, welcomed us with flower necklaces, and then we were separated into separate vans with around 4 students in each of them. We went to the money exchange place, which had excellent air conditioning (exchange rate was like, pretty epic. We were all millionaires by the time we left the building :P), and then we were off to our hotel. (the car also had AC so it was all good :P)

The ride to the hotel was even more tedious than the plane ride. We wounded through mountains and almost everyone on the van got sick. Well, mostly it was just Eugene that got sick but anyways. We sang to try and pass the time, we tried everything we could. But the 3 hour ride was too much for us after the plane rides that brought us to Bali. But FINALLY, we got to our hotel, and boy was that feeling a feeling of liberation, freed from the entanglements of sitting in a contained space for over 20 hours. We were welcomed to the hotel with fresh fruit beverages, and then we were taken to our rooms, which were a LONG way down from the reception... It seemed to take years to get to our rooms, but we were finally there.

As soon as we went to our rooms (I was sharing a room with song), I raced for the showers. Hehe~~ After that, I just went exploring around the hotels. It had a swimming pool, a pool bar, a spa, a massage thingy, and right behind the pool was the beach!!!! ><
When dinner was over, we met up in a small hall, where we introduced ourselves, and the Indo hosts introduced themselves. We were shown a video, and a Powerpoint about our stay in Indo, giving us information about our host families and other info about Indo. After this, I went straight back to my room, and went to bed while everyone else was probably doing some crazzzzyyyy stuff (hey hey, I was sick and not feeling well. And it was like 9 in the evening) Oh yeah forgot to mention, at night, in the hallway outside our rooms, geckos and frogs and other various forms of wildlife would come out and.. yeah.. do stuff O.O

Queen's B'day Camp - Coromandel~

So as most of you guys already know, I went to Coromandel on Queen's B'day long weekend, which is why I haven't posted anything new. However, now that I'm back, and also, my exams are over, I'd like to write about the great fun I had down at camp with chamber choir!!

On that cold, chilly morning of Saturday, I woke up, rolled over on my bed, to turn on my phone to check the time. That's when I realised that I was late, and I hadn't packed anything the night before due to a late night over dose of Code Geass.. I began my frantic search of clothes, bags, toiletries, and most importantly, food. After all packing was done, I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a choc bar from the pantry, and rush into the car, ready for mom to drive me off to church and choir practice. As I was on the car, listening to my iPod, I raced through my memory banks to try and remember if I had forgotten anything, but it turns out I had everything that I needed (however, I had forgotten my shampoo, which, I was soon to find out, a pain in the a**)

Choir practice commenced as usual, and I was only approx. 5mins late. After practice, the leader called for everyone to meet in the foyer with their respective stuff so that we could sort out who would be going in whose car, and if there would be any stops along the tedious ride to the Coromandel Peninsula. After all was sorted, I hopped into my ride, and long, stomach twisting, butt hurting, ride through the mountains to Coromandel, began. It was alright at the start, looking out the window, talking to each other, eating... But soon it got dead boring, so I started to doze off... but before I could fully rest in peace, we arrive at the Papakura BP station :(, but it had McDonald's :D, so I sluggishly got out of the car, and went and bought some lunch.

Then the torture of a ride recommenced. It was SOO boring.. and painful to the backside... I tried to sleep, and also to waste time eating.. but I eventually grew tired of sleeping, and ran out of food, so I decided to, yes that's right, READ!!! I read about 20 pages of 'Everything bad is good for you' (I recommend this book to EVERYONE, especially those Asian kids with parents that nag them to stop watching TV or playing games. This is a good book to support our 'motives' ^^. Btw, can anyone help me find a Chinese translation of this book? I really need to find one for my mom...) until we got 'lost'. Well that what we think we were, so we ended up just heading straight forward into some random bushes (in NZ, some random bushes is anywhere... and usually would mean that you're lost if you address where you are as some 'random bushes'). We got to our designated camp ground, but we were oblivious of that, so just ended up driving in circles around the Cook's Beach town for about 20mins, before we realized that THAT WAS our camp ground. At least we got there safely, and we beat everyone else ^^ (well, we went too far/fast, and forgot that we had to meet up at this one place, so everyone else waited for us when we were 20mins ahead... we didn't go back :P)

We waited for around 20mins for the others, so I decided to walk around the camp, and explore. I discovered that more than half of the space was for caravans/RV's, and there were barely any cabins O.o, which was surprising as the name of the place was called 'Cooks Beach Holiday Resort', and it looked really nice from the outside. There was a playground for kids up to 12 (damn), and also a pool, which I would soon find to be EXTREMELY cold, and fun :P. I went back to car because it started to rain, and got chatting with the driver of my ride. Turns out he used to play DotA as well, and plays WoW now. Finally, everyone came. The girls went and got our room keys, and assigned everyone to a room. I got put into a room with 5 other guys (everyone else's had 3 people), but it was great fun :P. We got our stuff, and headed out for our rooms, where we made ourselves at home. It was pretty decent actually, with a TV, couch, and everything else that we needed, even 'good' coffee!!! (it lacked shampoo, though...)

It was already around 4 when we got there, so we started to prepare dinner (well, we as in the preparing food people), the rest of us bummed around the camp, and just talked. We struggled to get the laptop to display onto the TV, but once we got there, we played 'Who wants to be a Millionaire?', Bible style xD, in Traditional Chinese ==... (Zelin=Fail) until dinner.

After dinner, we had a session (kind of like a youth group), which was actually really interesting.. I realized a lot about life... but I don't wanna go too deep into that atm. If you have any questions, just ask, I'd be happy to answer.

So our service finished, and it's 9:30. It's raining outside, and it's also REALLLLLLY cold. Why not go for a swim in the outdoor, roofless pool that was like 3 degrees? So that's exactly what we did. Not a good idea, but GREAT fun!!! ><. The 4 of us rushed back to our cabins, got changed, and then raced back to side of the pool with no shirt on in the rain. We were all a bit hesitant to jump in at first, so we spent the preceding 5mins warming up... hehehe. I ended up being the first one to jump in. And once I was in contact with the water... T.T"... it.. was.. SOOOOOOO COLD!!!! I jumped right back out of the water. The rain and the wind felt like nothing now. Then everyone else started jumping in... We continued doing this for around 5mins, until I could take it no longer. I dashed straight for the spa pool, and oh boy, did it feel good (if burning is a good feeling). Soon, the rest of the boys joined me.. and we spent the next hour, in the rain, talking about.. stuff.. haha. After I got back to the cabin, I headed straight for the showers. The feeling was.. SENSATIONAL!!! Even more sensational than that Dove Beauty Bar xDD.. I was pretty disappointed at first because there was no shampoo.. So I got out of shower, blow dried my hair and put all my clothes on without the feeling of silky flowing hair. Turns out one of my room mates had shampoo. AND CONDITIONER. Back in the shower I went ^^.

After everyone had finished all their showers, and the other guys had come back from fishing, 4 of us sat around a table and started the traditional camp card games (the other 3 talked about fishing and stuff...). I also put on a pot of coffee :P. After around 1 hour of card playing, and around 50 pushups and unnecessary hugs, we all migrated to the kitchen area where this guy, Neil, started telling the most HILARIOUS stories and jokes!!!!! And he told like 50!!! He had remembered so many! We were literally LOLing!!! LOLDSLKFJSDLKFLOL!!!!! I even ROFLed at one point xD. But good things always come to an end. At around 2 in the morning, Neil finally ran out of jokes, and so we all went to bed :'( (I ended up listening to my iPod till 4 cos it was so hot, and I kept thinking back at the jokes and cracking up under the blanket. Maybe the coffee had something to do as well...).

It's 8 in the morning, most of the other people have already woken up and started doing stuff, except for me and the guy that told the jokes (telling jokes is a tiring profession). I managed to drag myself out of bed, get a glass of water, and then get into the shower (Mmmm... shower...). Then it was breakfast time!! Everyone was there.. except for Neil, so yeah we kinda dragged him out to have breakfast, and to tell a few jokes well he's at it xD.

After breakfast, we had our Sunday service, which took around 1h30m.
Between the time service finished, and the time lunch was planned to start, we had about 1 hour, so guess what we did? Yes, we went out into the pools again xDD (It was also still raining...) This time, Neil was there with us = More JOKES!!! ^^ We talked about some more stuff, like spa pools and arcades (because guys have SOOO much to talk about :P).

See we're all so happy because of the joke ^^ except for the kid cos he doesn't get it xDDD jks jks~

After our relaxing morning spa, we went to lunch, and then started packing up for home :'( -sniff sniff- Yeah nothing much interesting about that...
So then yeah... Took the long boring ride back home (managed to sleep most of the way back. ^^), and then got home.. :/

Overall, this camp was really awesome, and I'm glad that I decided to on this camp (bum to those people that didn't come because they 'had' 'basketball', oh wells, their loss :P).

Btw, now that most of my exams are over, I'm gonna start writing about my real vacations and stuffs. :P
Stay tune~

Getting started~

So hey guys~~~

I've been to quite a lot of places, but I haven't really been able to get around to recording or writing about them... so yeah.. here it goes!!!~

btw.. the first one I'm going to write about was when I went to America.. in 2008.. haha~