My Trip to WUHAN!!!: Strawberry picking and Partaaay

Today, we went strawberry picking. I think genuinely most of us were quite excited the strawberries that get sent to Singapore are usually quite sour and bland and so we thought that picking them right here from the source was going to taste even better and sweeter buuuuut as usual we were wrong!!!!! Our first obstacle was the muddy, slippery and tiny pathway which we had to conquer in order to reach the so-called green houses. Everyone kept walked very carefully so as to not fall. Unfortunately, Samuel fell twice and got mud all over his jeans and coat and Nazhifah was screaming all the way!!! When we finally reached the greenhouse, we were given a plastic bag to keep the strawberries that we collected. We then started plucking the strawberries. According to my knowledge on strawberries, the redder they are the sweeter they are. Therefore, I started plucking the reddest strawberries I saw. There were some strawberries I saw which had mold on them and some of them were overripe as they were sticky and some under ripe as they were still of a greenish-white colour. By the time we finished picking I think most of us were sweating due to the fact that we technically were in a green house. When we were about to leave the farm, we realised that we had to pay for the strawberries to take them home. Some of my friends paid between 5-15 yuan to take their pack home but we were also told that if we didn’t want to take it home we could leave our strawberries there with them so when I asked Dr Tan about this, she asked the person-in-charge if I could leave mine there as I wasn’t really keen on bringing mine home as I had tried some of the strawberries earlier, after washing them of course with the water from my bottle, and I was quite disappointed that they weren’t as sweet as I expected them to be. I have never tasted a sweet strawberry in my entire life!!! How sad. Now back to the point, the person-in-charge told me off without asking me to pay. I was so grateful to him!! But I still had to walk down the dreaded muddy path, though it wasn’t as muddy as what it was when we first arrived as the mud had dried, it was still muddy and slippery. Before we boarded the bus, all of us were quite upset that our shoes and even our jeans had mud on them and we felt really bad as we had to board the bus back with the muddy shoes which meant that the bus driver would have an extra clean up job to do. We were then given about half an hour to clean up ourselves before we headed over to a party hosted by the local students. I think the first thing everyone did when we got back home was to rush to the bathroom and clean our shoes. It was a good thing I took the toothbrush from the hotel back at the Red Cliff as it came in handy today when we needed to scrub our shoes free of mud. Most of us changed our shoes, some of us wore slippers but luckily I had an extra pair of shoes to wear. We then headed to a hall situated in the Sports Hall which is right next to our dormitory building. The local students put up a performance for us. The first performance was break dancing. They break dancers had quite good skills, similar to the break dancers back at home. The next was a game where two groups of four had to pass water from their own cup to their group mate’s cup but they could only use their mouths to hold the cups. In the end, the winners got a calligraphy script which was really nice. The next game was musical chairs and I so happened to get ‘volunteered’ by my friends to play but it was a good thing as I ended up winning and I got the calligraphy script as well!! There was then a performance by the roller skating team of the university and I was quite impressed by their skills. Though they made some mistakes, their skills were quite impressive. Then there was a performance by the local flute orchestra and according to Nazhifah who is an excellent flute player, their flutes were out of tune but at least they tried their best. Next, the game that was played where a group of two people had to transport a balloon using a specific body part which does not include your hands. The first group was Ms Mikia and Mr Le versus Dr Tan and Ms Chua. They had to transport the balloon using the heads and Ms Mikia and Mr Lee won and they too won a calligraphy script along with Wei Seng and Joel, who transported the balloons using their backs against Asaph and Nicholas. The final game was where individuals had a group of balloons tied up to their ankles and they had to burst each other’s balloons by stepping on them. The person with the most balloons at the end of the game would win and this time Rachel won first and Nazhifah, second. Then we had a long karaoke session. First, we sang some Chinese songs and later on we sang some Korean and English songs. It was quite a fun experience but also a sad day as Ms Mikia is leaving us!!! It’s so sad as we really bonded with her over this trip and though it was our first time getting to know her, she’s like a mother to us now and I will really miss her and hope to see her more often back in Ngee Ann. Although it’s only goodbye for now, I will still miss you Ms Mikia!!!

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