Yeah, we're back from Medan. I must say that it's a good trip, but it's also an ironic feeling, that it isn't very good after all. I'm having a mixed feeling now, since all of us missed the 10 who could not go over due to one reason or another.

Over at Medan, we are constantly reminded that even though it's a council retreat to Medan, the full attendance could not be met. It's still how well we can do after the trip that matters, and that is crucial.

It's really hard to pen down anything which happened during the trip, since what we go through could not really be found in any textbook. However, I could always try. Let me start from the night before.

Actually, on the same day, I went over to Sherman's place at around 1am, and slept there for the night, since Sherman's dad is going to send us to the airport about 4 hours after I reach. The night went without disturbance, except for the dog Wave, which keep licking my hand after I fell asleep for minutes, waking me up of a shallow sleep. It's like adrenaline, the night before a trip, I'm very hyper, this fire kept me alert well into the trip. So the night went by, with Sherman, Ziliang and Yilong in deep sleep, waking up at around 4.30am to get ready to leave at 5am. Well, it started to rain heavily, and that quite hinder the trip after we left his house. Along the PIE, the visibility is quite poor, and we had to slow down, wondering whether we can make at at 5.45am, which we did.

Most of the councillors are there already, and we got a pleasant surprise when Celeste, Pat, Kaiting and Peirong showed up to send us off. Really missed you guys alot over at Medan, and hope Yunnan will be a whole council trip. Well, even being outside, we worked quite pretty efficiently. Can you believe that all of us, including the teachers, checked in within 7 minutes. It's a record for 30 people to check in within that period of time.


A group photo before we clear customs at Changi.



Our flight, on the departure board, second from the top.


The flight is MI232(Silkair). And I'm sitting by the window, with Mr Ng and Mr Leow. Took many photos on the flight, taken that it's only a 1 hour flight. We landed in Medan quite swiftly, and cleared the customs to board our bus awaiting at the airport. After we boarded the bus, it drove straight to our hotel in Medan, which is where we spent our first night in Medan.

After which, we went over to Singapore Piaget Academy, a place with standards ranging from Primary 1 and to the current secondary 3. It is also one of the smallest school I've seen, and it's barely 5 secondary classes of less than 30 in each class. We communicate through English, and if you think that their standard is low, think again, they speak good english. I won't go into details since it's a very good trip, meeting alot of great friends from there as well.

After which, we had a Angkasa Hotel buffet, and it's the shortest buffet I had, which is barely half an hour long. It's quite nice, and soon, we're on the bus again heading to a canning factory in Indonesia. We saw how the frozen food are prepared and also, how certain food is canned and everything. It's really a labour based industry, where females actually dominated the works of the factory, rather than males or technology. We saw and hear and smell the different areas of the factory, and witnessed how the frozen seafood which we could be eating, are prepared.

In the evening, we headed over to a sultan's palace, called Maimun Palace. Currently, the sultan is already 10 years old, and is the 14th generation. The royal family has no power now, since Indonesia is ruled by the government. However, it's already a run down place built all the way back to 1888, but it never went through any hardships like fire or anything. Well, the details will be included in a report which we're supposed to come up with.

That pretty much ended Day 1, and we're back at the hotel before we knew it. That's roughly day 1, with Merdeka Walk being our last place we visited for the day (or night). Had our dinner there, and shopped a little, and that's also where Michell got reunited with her mum.

Tired. Will update on day 2 and 3 tomorrow.