Ying Rong's Campfire Reflection

This year's theme is "Bon Voyage, Journey Around the World". It's my second campfire with A Guides. I was in the Gateway committee. Since I had been in the Structure committee last year, it was a welcome change and a new experience. Also, since I am Sec 2 now, I joined the Sec 2 dance, the opening performance. It's very different from last year, I think.

First, we (the 2 patrols in the Gateway committee) brainstormed about ideas for the gateway. We wanted it to be a challenge, but not too dangerous and it had to be easy to build. So, the first few ideas we came up with were rejected based on any of the above grounds. However, we came up with the idea of a "swinging bridge" we felt exciting enough and the seniors thought safe enough. It was quite complex, the system of ropes, though I was not unduly worried.

The Sec 2 dance team consisted of about 12 people, of which 2 were the ICs and 2 knew the dance well enough to be sort of an IC as well. The first session we watched the four of them dance to Insomnia by Craig David. The next few we learnt the steps of the dance. The actions were simple enough but it was hard to remember all of them at one go. Then, the ICs decided to change the ending but I was not affected seeing that I haven't learnt till that far, anyway. So instead of just Insomnia, we were dancing to Da Zhang Fu as well. I kind of enjoyed dancing and pretty soon the actions came almost naturally except that I still needed some reminders about the middle part.

The gateway committee seemed to have nothing else to do after the banner was painted because the actual gateway could only be built on the day itself. So most of the time, the gateway committee was helping other patrols, with the exception of the two PLs who did a little touching up on the banner. I spent much time with the structure committee and the souvenir committee.

The Sec 2 dance altered again on the very day of the campfire. The Insomnia part and Da Zhang Fu ending were both lengthened and additional dance steps added. The dance was still easy to do although I was flustered about the change at the eleventh hour. Of course, now the dance looked much better and the music flowed less abruptly between songs. That was what the seniors wanted.

I didn't actually help during the building of the gateway, but I was tucking in the loose ends of rope and checking for unstable parts after it was built (and when the builders left - I didn't even know they already came, since I was with structure, which was the second patrol furthest from the gateway. Naturally I didn't see it until I was called to help out). It was quite stable and the only difficulty was finding were to stuff in the loose ends of the rough rope. Then I was sent to help the other patrols again.

The campfire itself... well, maybe all things considered it might be a success on our part. Though some things didn't go quite right. Like when somehow someone from the PA crew played Insomnia when the singer started singing (so we missed our cue to go onstage, which was the music part, no singing). No, I don't blame them since we wouldn't even had any song if they didn't help us. The gateway was really exciting though there was a problem when we were taking it down. And the Sec 3 dance was great! Everyone knew the song Nobody. It was really fun, being the performer for once whilst being an audience as well.

Ying Rong