charmie's simple life

charmie has been reported to be missing in action (MIA) for a couple of days due to her Transition Weekend for Medical Students! anyway... it was a three day camp starting on 23-25 feb and it sure incorporated loads of stuff we would expect in lectures, tutorials, PCLs (patient centred learning) and Oskis which are practical examinations. (: pretty interesting academic camp i've ever been to. we scooted off to Philip Island early in the morning on fri. sure was a long journey there.. took abt 1.5 hours of bus ride.. some pretty sceneries along the way there.. (: first time seeing sheep and cows and horses in abundance...!! whooooooops!

then we were divided into groups where we share a room... and i had the upper bunk... pretty nice holiday resort... some sceneries...

it had this giant swing which i tried... ten times better than the Viking. too bad i din have a try at the flying fox. we could only choose one yea.. the meals were pretty good and we snacked most of the time!
the tutes/ tutorial groups were slightly differnet from those at s'pore cos the students are so spontaneous and no ones gives you times to speak.. they keep interrupting each other.. oh my...!!! the s'porean meddie group then played captain's ball during the break session... was a fun activity...!
on the second night, we opted for hte Penguin Parade tour which was an extra activity tt brought us to see the smallest penguins ever... upon reaching the beach, the wind was at gushing speed... chilly, cold and windy! since it is a tourist attraction, they had the spectators stand... right in fron of the beach. the boardwalks led from the entrance all the way to the beach. along the way, we could see come lil' holes amongst the grassy patches

and lil' man-made wooden crates as penguin homes... some of them were alr in their holes, while the majority were expected to return in the next few hours... the sky was alr getting darker as we proceeded to the stand... which were crowded w tourists.. but we managed to inch our way to the front... almost near the sand and close to the shore.. the waves were huge but the penguins were still not in sight.

photography was not allowed to prevent from blinding the poor penguins... then after awhile of waiting... a few were finally washed up to shore... they stood up, waddled a lil' and when the next waves came, they floated back into the water... this carried on for a while til they got tired and so did we... and they decided to wait for more of them to get washed up before doing a penguin line-up... they stood in a relatively straight line... and all started waddling forward... and into the grassy patches... the turn out was not too impressive, probably a total of 20 penguins tt night only... probably they returned on the other areas of the seashore... cos when we walked back to to visitor's centre, loads of them were alr in their homes... (: how lovely.. and did you even know that penguins wear sweaters when the weather gets too cold for them? the Penguin Foundation of Philip Island has volunteers making knitted sweaters for them, with each donation made by the public... (actually i managed to gte up close to one penguin to take a pix of it... but it waddled out of the camera view when the shutters closed... so yea.. i got only its tail... how lovely still... (:

our s'pore meddies group picture before leaving the camp!

charmie
4:09 AM

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