Nature+week+picnic!

23April10

Yesterday we had an awesome picnic at the Botanic Garden! The RaM classes went to the Botanic Garden early in the morning(and missing the singing of national anthem, yay) together with our picnic baskets and lame plastic mats. We were singing in the small buses and I didn't want to get down.

When we reached, the weather was really cooling, birds were chirping(actual birds, not those from the recordings) and the swaying green trees made me feel like just sitting right there and enjoying the cool breeze. There was this majestic kukup tree with its limbs twisting and long branches spreading out. It was probably the biggest tree there. It has really long roots and thick trunk. We were counting the leaves and number of twigs and we got into an argument over which is the branch and which is the twig. But in the end my group mates decided not to care about it anymore and I ended up wondering alone which is a branch.

For physics we had to listen to sounds of bird chirping and it was really relaxing, except the sound waves were confusing me a little. Well I got most of them wrong except for the cool one that sounds like heart beats. Is the reason birds can make different sounds from us because of their beaks or vocal chords?

Picnic was the most fun! We had our mats ready and two groups were supposed to exchange food and stuff. I was in group 1 and the other group(2) didn't bring a mat, we brought 3 small ones and shared with them. Then we had to pour drinks for them, serve them noodles while they sit there eating. And Group 2 was like just throwing their lunch boxes down and going "Er...go take the sandwiches yourselves." It was really funny. How does the theme "Tribal" got anything to do with sandwiches and apples? Then they had these strings with leaves stapled on them and proceeded to put them on our heads after we complained about their lack of service. After that we decided to do a tribal dance(partly due to lack of food and spare time) by circling our picnic mats and raising our arms in the air. We went off to dance around other groups too, in turn getting brownies and cakes with ice-cream cone(how cool is that!). It was really funny and my stomach ached from laughing. Some people were staring but it didn't really matter. =)

Afterwards we went to listen about the man who planted trees, which is pretty cool considering the whole statue of the man is really big and it had to be entirely grown out of plants. Further more it was far more complex a shape than the usual cool shapes people try to do. But later I realize they clipped the parts of the body together to form the man. I wonder if he really planted 10,000 trees. He must have been a lonely man.

We got shushed for singing too loudly because apparently the other group listening to the man who planted trees after us could not hear the speaker. Really? I bet they were not paying close enough attention. I don't think I like typing in wikispaces too much because it doesn't have auto correct. I typed "after wards" instead of "afterwards" and they did not correct it for me.

Overall I think the Botanic Garden is really pretty! And the trees are all so green and there's this feeling of freshness in the air like the vegetable section in supermarkets except better because there isn't air-con. Maybe I will build a school when I grow up and it shall be inspired by the Botanic Garden!