We had two days of centre closure on Thursday & Friday. Our management had organised a team building day at Sentosa. I was like thinking, what on earth are we going to do there? Play netball or volleyball? Frankly speaking, I'm not a sporty type of person. And we were kind of force to join the rest of the teachers from other centres. So unwillingly, we had to come to Sentosa not knowing what kind of actitivies we are gonna do.
Down at Sentosa, we were assigned to several activities of low and high elements. Low Elements are designed to get the participants to work as a team and be responsible for the safety of others as well as for themselves. These are great interaction and communication tools. High Elements are about 10 metres high above the ground and provide participants with opportunities to confront fears & examine how people react when they face intimidating challenges.
The teachers were divided into several teams of colours. Mine was purple (my fav colour), had barney (yes, that purple barney) for a team name, and we sort had to do cheers for team spirit. It goes something like this, B - Brilliant, A - Attitude, R - Resillient, N - Novelty, E - Excellent and Y - Yay, complete with the actions for each letters.
First activity was archery. I've been wanting to try this since god knows when. Two of my collegues managed to hit target on the board. Alas, I managed to hit the grass!
We then proceed to Trolley. The aim was to collect as many balls as possible. We had to coordinate well in order to proceed forward. It was tough coordinating together. At one point, we had to start again.
The aim of this game was to decode the 'password' and deactivate the 'bomb' using alphabets mats. The instructor was saying since we are teachers, we should know the sequence from a to z and z to a.
We went on to try balacing ourselves on a big platform and stay balance for at least 20 seconds. We tried a lot of strategies in order to stay balance but none worked. After 30 minutes, we could stay balance for only 10 seconds! Man it was tough!
Since young, I have always this fear of heights. But on that day, I was determined to overcome that. I tried one of the high elements activities, which required me to walk on a thin line 10 metres above ground. My only support was my own rope and the thick ropes which hanged about the length of my two arms spread apart. The climbing wasn't that scary. When I was on top, the wind was blowing quite strongly. I was determined to carry on no matter what. And before I know it, I had reached the end of the line. I was so relieved! It had occured to me that I was not scared of heights at all. Just the determination to carry on no matter how tough it gets. I was really glad I did that.
We tried two more activities and it was over. My arms and thighs were aching for few days. And I was really exhausted and hungry at the end of the day.
After this experience, I can't wait to try on more challenging activities. Till next year...
For pictures go to http://nurzzz.multiply.com/photos/album/16
2:25 pm