Orientation Week

Survived orientation week.. it was over at 4.15pm yesterday. It was huge relief to get over it.. I thought I would just go back to my room and sleep for the rest of the day, but when I got back to my room.. somehow there were too many distractions to fall asleep.

Okay, on registration day it was ok, quite efficient I must say. Move on to.. let's see, moral session? We have 'moral sessions' during the Muslim prayer times. It has nothing to do with Moral though, just some games. The 1st Moral session we had was.. well, not good. Really. In my humble opinion the seniors who handled us probably relished the thought of having new juniors to torture. They shouted at us like we were animals and scolded us for every tiny fault. Eh friend, we are NEW, remember? Anyway, the 1st session left me with a bitter aftertaste. It reminded me of PBSM days.. especially PBSM camp time..

Then my roommate asked me how things went.. and I told her about the Moral session, how I felt about being treated like that. A few other housemates were there, and they said that in previous years it was much much much 'fiercer'. Haha, I told her about a particular senior.. without knowing that she is pretty good friends with that girl. The next day(we had a public holiday during o week) that senior was in our room and talking.. and asked me how it went and whether she was too fierce. =P My eyes 'terbeliak' at that question. I immediately turned to my roommate and said, "You told her!" But of course she defended herself and said nope, she didn't. Haha. Anyway I just said yeah a lil' too fierce.

Then we had more taklimats.. some simple exercise every morning.. jogging, 'senaman seni'.. no big deal lah. The talks were mostly about.. truthfully I don't know. But the talks were given in a 'friendly' manner, not like in school days where the teachers made it all stiff and formal. The rules about clothing.. I find some of it silly, but not gonna make a big deal out of it. They keep talking about 'distracting students from studies' if we dress too sexily. I was from SMK Taman SEA where there were so many teachers who never did follow such rigid rules, but I never heard of students who were 'distracted from their studies'. Their logic is similar to the 'wear sexy and get raped' kinda theory. Blaming the victims instead of the predator.

So our schedule was something like, moral session, morning exercise, breakfast, talks until dinner time, then moral session, then final talk, and back to the room. We were woken up at 3am every morning, the seniors rode on motorbikes and honked and announced and blared the sirens and shouted. Yeah, 3am - 4am during orientation week is really really irritating and noisy. As my house only has 2 juniors, the other 8 are seniors, the both of us never did switch on the lights until much later. When the 'motorbike people' saw no lights they really really harrassed our house. Until one morning they announced, "RUMAH (my house number) SILA BANGUN!" Hahaha. My house is the last house in the row with juniors I think, cause all the motorbikes make a U-turn when they reach my house.

Anyway, we had to walk back every night during o week. We left IPDA at about 12.30am to 1am, and reached back to our rooms at about 1.30am.. sometimes later if they decide to direct us to the field and give us more lectures. The lack of sleep very nearly killed me off. Thankfully the activities during O week were pretty relaxed, and not much energy was required.

In the end, I found out that the Moral sessions were really the only thing to look forward to during O week. It was actually a session where we could have fun and just play games. And besides the seniors were nicer after the 1st session. Minus the fierceness, the activities we did were really tame as compared to the school camps I used to attend. 'Punishment' for losers were.. well, fun and not at all stressful. haha. The worst punishment we had was the one time we had to take sweets out from flour using our mouth, and even then the seniors allowed us to wash our faces and mouth immediately after doing it. This kinda leniency you'll never ever see in school camps. Haha. They even gave us tissues! When we had activities that were slightly dirty the seniors had wet cloths and tissues ready for us. That's really great IMO. Hehe.

On Thursday I had a pretty bad day though. I had a bit of diarrhoea and had to run to the toilet pretty often. Stomach problems plus lack of sleep was a really horrible combination. I kept debating whether to declare myself sick or not. But I decided I wasn't.. so I survived orientation that night. By the Moral session that night I was perspiring profusely whenever I felt any pain in my stomach. But with God's grace I survived it.. although I really felt like death was better at that time. Lol. Thursday night we reached back at 1.40am I think, and after showering I had to write a report on one of the sessions.. so I ended up sleeping at 2.40am that night. And got up at 3am. I had to summon ALL the hard-earned discipline I gained during tough badminton training sessions just to get up. Friday morning was when the exhaustion really hit most people. The seniors had a really rough time trying to get everyone up, and some of them only reached IPDA at 7am. Seems seniors had to go to some houses and knock on the windows. Lol. Friends called the handphones to wake their friends up to no avail.

Hence, like I said, the activities were okay, but the lack of sleep was really a first I've been through. During camps we get at least 2-3 hours of sleep, and even then most camps are only 3 days, so we are sleep-deprived for only that short period of time. Not so for orientation week..

During my first few days here, I had all sorts of thoughts.. Would Taylor's have been a better option? Why did God send me here? Why not IPBA? And most frighteningly, Is this really God's will for me???? The thought of this not being God's will really frightened me.. but I realised that those were just doubts creeping in. I know God has a purpose for me.. He has His reasons for throwing me here.. to be so far away from my comfort zone. I've no doubt that I'll end up a much stronger person after I leave this place.

1 or 2 years back I felt God telling me that He would make life tougher for me in the future.. I know this sounds silly but I felt Him telling me that a few times. So I've always told myself that life would be tougher for me next time, and I've been bracing myself to face the unknown. But never in a thousand years would I have imagined IPDA would be that.. What a way to strengthen me. I keep being reminded that I'm only 17. Yesterday I was just thinking of the 17 year olds SMK Taman SEA who are still in form 5 and yet here I am, in some far away unknown land. Again, I longed for the life in secondary school days, where I led such a comfortable life. I wondered how life would have been in form 6. I know I would have enjoyed form 6 the way I enjoyed form 1-5. I would probably be busy with the prefects installation instead of orientation week this week. I would probably be training the yellow house badminton players at this point of time. I would be going for youth group this afternoon. I would be playing badminton tomorrow afternoon after church. Just yesterday I wondered why IPDA.. why not the IP in Perak or IPBA in KL? I have to go back to settle my perjanjian stuff, and the journey home is gruelling. To go home would be such a simple matter then.

Enough of that. I know God has a purpose for me here.. and I've really got nothing to complain about. I've got great housemates, coursemates, seniors.. so I'm not miserable. I just question some things..

Proverbs 16:9
In his heart a man plans his course,
but the Lord determines his steps.

Yeah. How true that is.

That's all for now.. =)

God bless,
Jo

Edit: Before my dear readers who have been through all sorts of orientations and camps start telling me that orientation is always like that(the ganas part by facilitators), let me ask you, WHY? Why should the facilitators during orientation week put on such a fierce mask? Why scare us? During the last day of orientation one of the seniors explained that they were fierce because it was orientation week. I bit back my tongue from asking her why. I think I was already too frank during the sessions. Lol.