Day 1

I woke up at 4 30 in the morning, something that should never be done again. I was exhausted and couldn’t even get out of the house without falling asleep. My dad called a cab; I grabbed my bag and jumped in the taxi, not knowing that I fell asleep again. I got out and saw all the other Grade 8’s and realized they were also half asleep and was glad that I wasn’t the only one. Immediately we got on the bus, right on time at 5:15 – Ms. Nah is always on time – and fell asleep again until we arrived at the airport. We met some other students there and said goodbye to Mr. Bland, Ms. Caverly, and all the parents, and by that time we were ready to leave Singapore. We stood in line and waited and waited to check in our luggage and get our boarding pass. We were at gate E3, and had 30 minutes to wander around the airport. Immediately we all simultaneously went to Starbucks, sat down and drank some coffee, Erica and I had a Caramel latte, and it woke us up instantly. I had a really bad cold at that time so I took loads of Panadol in order for my ear not to burst , but they still did. After waiting for a long time, we finally boarded our plane. I sat next to Theresa and Erica was opposite me on the other Aisle. I sat in the seat, made a tent and slept, I felt really, really sick. When the food came, I woke up – of course- it was so good, we had an omelet and really good chicken sausages, then I went back to bed. It didn’t seem like a long ride at all because after we had our food, I remember landing. A rush of excitement ran through me and I couldn’t wait to get started on the activities. We grabbed our luggage and stepped outside of the airport, the weather in Thailand is so much nicer than Singapore, it has no humidity. Group 1 – the adventure group – got into this bus that was covered with nemo pictures, Erica and I really like it. When we got on, our tour guide – Robert, he is so cool – told us that the bus ride would be an hour long, so Craig got out his deck of ‘uno’ cards and we played for a long time and I even won.


We arrived at the Prem Center, got informed of the rules, and was told to leave our bags in our apartment and go straight to lunch. The walk to the cafeteria is amazing; there are rivers, thousands of trees, and even bridges. We had this really good spaghetti for lunch, and went back to our apartments to change. I am in Group 1 one and we went mountain biking. Ms. O and Mr. Sarich were our teachers in charge and they forewarned us that the mountain bike trip would be really hard and tiring so we brought bucket loads of water. We picked out our bikes and I got this amazing Trek bike, which saved my butt from aching the entire trip. The entire mountain biking trip was 18 k; we finished in 2 and half hours, apparently much faster than last year’s group. When we first started, I thought it was going to be an easy breeze, but it was completely the opposite. The hills were humungous and I had to get off my bike millions of times. The sun was beating down on us so much that we gulped down so much water, but Simon got dehydrated and threw up. Before we finished, Thais, Akash, Micheal and I went on the right track, but the entire group got lost, so we had to wait 30 minutes for them to catch up. We finally finished, got back, and went straight to the shower. That night we had a barbeque dinner with a bonfire and we even got to roast smores. At the end, the Prem Center staff told us to make a rap about our day, it was really cool.

(All photos credited to Erica Dauzacker)