ycamp is over!

i must say that ycamp was awesome, with awesome working partner, with awesome volunteers and awesome beneficiaries =DD so that made my experience in ycamp a GOOD one =)

it interests me to see how people coming from different backgrounds, people with different personalities, people with different working styles, people with different thoughts n ideals all come together to contribute their part for ycamp. its pretty encouraging to see the effort put in by everyone, that the beneficiaries are still loved no matter who they are =)))

i totally melted when i saw volunteers handling their beneficiaries. from being stunned and feeling at lost at day 1, to being enthusiastic and all hyped-up on day 2, to sharing their joy and experiences on day 3. all their effort count. every single bit of it. especially when i saw 3 guys in my group handling one kid. they were totally awesome and i just couldnt help but smile when i saw them all putting aside their manliness and did whatever they could just to interact and play with their beneficiary, bathed and cleaned and fed their beneficiary. i feel happy for them because their genuine act of wanting to help their beneficiary is remarkable, and for the fact that they had 0 experience handling children with special needs, they were awesome =)

im sure everyone in ycamp came for a purpose. definitely, conflicts and problems arise during camp but ultimately, i feel that so long as we have met our purpose/objective then all else is secondary.

and i definitely came home feeling 'value-added'. the camp totally made me realise how autism is truely hetereogenous. it is easy for us to reason but to reason with children with autism is not easy at all. we say children with autism has a deficit in theory of mind, the lack of ability to take someone else's perspective. but so? how are we going to make them understand that others have a mind of their own? why school textbook didnt teach me how to deal with that??! though at the end of the day, the problem was resolved but it was after much experimenting and testing what work and what didnt. but yea, i guess thats what learning is all about. and one of the beneficiaries totally made me laugh whenever i talked to him. a pity the rockwall was cancelled due to rain =( my beneficiary was totallly looking forward to it since day 1 =( but its alright! weather is unpredictable.

and one thing! i totally don't like it when people say the kid is autistic, the kid is intellectually disabled. no, they are not!!!!! they are children with autism, children with intellectual disability. the condition is a part of them, not the whole of them. so people, lets not label the children! not good!

anyway, ycamp ended on a happy note! so i shall wrap up my feelings and move onnnn!