You get what you give

A lot to write, and unfortunately I'm not going to remember it all.

Friday I got up early, although not as early as Wednesday, which proved to be less than smart since getting on the bus 30 minutes later got me to the kids' hotel 5 minutes late instead if 40 minutes early. Guess I found when rush hour begins. Made the bus to the zoo, though, and spent the morning and early afternoon looking at animals in dirty, small cages while absolutely roasting, being eaten by bugs, and carrying my laptop for unavoidable reasons. It was like the most awful trip to the zoo ever, except that I was there with 15 kids who thought it was the most wonderful trip to the zoo ever, and that made all the difference. They even insisted on carrying my computer at times, as much as I tried to insist I was fine.

These kids have gotten more and more amazing every day. They were singing on the bus at 8:30am, and again in the office of Standard Chartered bank when we visited that afternoon. (Standard Chartered had prepared a really fabulous session with skits and a multimedia quiz and prizes and everything.) On the way back to the hotel, someone discovered the microphone on the bus (like, for tour guides to use I assume) and the kids took turns singing for each other to thunderous applause. These kids are 12-17, so many of them aren't in the pure "I'm a cute kid" stage anymore, but they're, like, people, with personalities and opinions and everything.

We got back to the hotel around 4:30, and Rose and I headed over to Creek Art, the location of the closing dinner, to meet Simon and Rager and talk about the dinner. We there for 4 increasingly frustrating hours, which ended with Rose and I realizing if this dinner was going to happen, we'd have to basically take over. It was a lot of validation for general frustration I've felt at times over the past 2 months, but also gave us both serious headaches. Some combination of the day in the sun and the new stress made me not feel so good, so I chilled in the office while they got dinner (and ate something myself), wrote a new script with Rager for MCing, and went home as soon as I could (11:30).

Saturday I woke up and felt better, and headed off to the office for my last day as a Chi Heng intern. Rose had decided to skip the camp trip to the science museum to make sure we got everything dealt with okay, which meant I spent a fairly pleasant and low-stress morning. Worked on the script with Rose's help in the afternoon, then she developed a fever and Rager went to get her some medicine. That's when the really heavy rain started to hit, and before I knew it I was wading through 3 inches of water to bring Rager an umbrella. We taxied to Creek Art, I changed into my fancy (and dry) clothes, and we did set-up.

I really like events. Before it started, I rehearsed with Rager, hung around checking people in, and talked to the kids when they arrived. The event itself was not extremely smooth, but Rager and I definitely did our part as MCs and I was pleased with how it went. Lots of enthusiasm from the guests. Hung out for a while after, mingling and saying goodbye to the most awesome kids ever. I'm gonna miss them a lot! Brought some stuff back to the office and said goodbye to the Chi Heng staff. It's been a valuable experience for sure, probably worth the bad times just for the conversations I had with the kids tonight alone. I'm not really a kid person, so it's really special for me when I meet some that I connect with.