How I spent my Chinese New Year


Hey guys, I know that I have not posted up anything on my blog for the past few days, simply because I was in Malaysia, for a religious camp- like outing with the people of my religion which is being Jain. For all the people, who do not understand or have never heard of the religion “Jainism” then here is a short summary that might interest you.
Jains are people who are vegetarian and believe in non-violence, we pray to a god by the name of Lord Mahavir. There are around 350 Jains in Singapore and we have our very own temple and society. Jainism is one of many Hindu religions. Every two years, the Jain society holds a retreat in Malaysia at different resorts. Jain speakers are flown in from all over the world to share their knowledge with us over the 3 day – 2 night stay.

On the first day...
I got up at about 7.30 and after freshening up I headed to the bus depot. I enjoyed my bus ride as I got together with my friends during the bus ride and played games on the bus. After a 2 hour bus ride, we all reached the resort. My parents collected out room keys and we headed to our room to unpack and settle down. Later on, as a community, we all gathered in the ball room for lunch. It was a moment I particularly enjoyed the most because all of us Jain youngsters got together and ate lunch while sharing laughs. After lunch, we went bowling swimming and played soccer. Soccer was the most fun because its was “BOYS versus GIRLS” and it was really funny as the girls could hardly kick the ball and were screaming after every goal they conceded. At that night, there was an opening ceremony and all the four jain speakers who were flown in from different places around the world were introduced to us. Later on, there were dance performances put up by people of all ages followed by a drama. Since it was a long day, after the opening ceremony, everyone went to bed because we all had a really long day, including my parents.
On the second day...
After breakfast, everyone was split up according to their age for example, people from ages 13- 25 had to go to a certain room for their lecture, thus everyone was with their own age group including the senior citizens also. I enjoyed my first lecture alot because I got to understand why all Jains were vegetarians and that was the question that was on my mind for a very long time. For the rest of the evening, we sat through different lectures from different speakers and we did not feel bored or lethargic at all because we were learning about interesting topics and we also learnt more through playing games that were more hands on. “Behind everything, there is a reason.”
Well, since we were all due to return back to Singapore the next day, we decided to stay up that night as a group and have fun. We all met up at the pool side at about 10.30pm and had a blast there as we played cards till four in the morning and to keep us awake, we all munched on sugary candies.
On the whole, the camp was really fun and I also got to learn alot more about my religion that will definitely help me in the future because of its important learning points. Even my grandparents and parents enjoyed the camp thoroughly because even they learnt more about our religion in a different way!