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JOURNAL 1
Orientation Camp
As we all know, there are many activities being held for freshman students during September and October, like orientation camp and first meeting party. Because I had joined the orientation camp last year, and it was a memorable two-day experience for me, I decided to participate in the preparation of orientation camp this year. At the beginning, I only knew a few of my team members; otherwise, because everyone wasn’t familiar with each other, there was often an awkward atmosphere in the air during meetings, and I could say I didn’t enjoy the meetings at that time, I always wanted to find an excuse to run away as well.
In the middle stage of the preparations, our team members were getting into the swing of things more than before, so the discussion process was going more smoothly. As all the events gradually took shape, I could feel the cohesion within our group was improving, which made our bonds get stronger.
Time flew, then September arrived so quickly that it seems many things were still not fully prepared before the first pre-camp training. Due to the two-month summer vacation, we needed to spend more time on the meetings to refine all the activities we are responsible for. Although there were still some flaws in our activities during the first pre-camp training, I believe we did as many as we could, and we also found where to improve. However, things never go as smoothly as we expected. The RPG storyline was too short, and even during the first playthrough, almost all the team finished the game in a very short time. It means that we needed to change lots of things, like storyline, characters and dialogues, which was truly a big project for us. We spent only three days to finish a whole new storyline and characters setting before the second pre-camp training, we even made lots of props for the characters to make the whole look more engaging.
It was finally the day of orientation camp. We gathered at the College of Humanity early to set up for the upcoming Land Game and also check the details. After that, we saw the team members and the counselor walking to the avenue to do the icebreaker game, which meant the orientation camp had officially started! During the first day's activities, my favorite was the RPG and the mock scenario, because we spent a lot of time discussing these two games. In the process of conducting the RPG, there was a session that two characters would fight with each other, and seeing everyone so engaged made me feel that all the hard work of making the props until early morning was worth it.
The highlight of the second day was definitely the campfire night. At the beginning, everyone, including the staff and all the team members, went up and danced the “Haka,” which was a really interesting scene. Because I also had to perform, I was very nervous during the waiting period, fearing that I would forget everything once I stood on stage. Fortunately, it all ended successfully in the end. And the final part was the grand chorus and emotional moment. Seeing everyone swaying along with the music was so touching, and it also marked a perfect ending to this camp.