Day 1: Meeting our mentees

Today was the first day we met our high school mentees. The day went pretty well, all in all, and our team really clicked with most of the mentees. I personally was really impressed with both the level of English some of the mentees spoke as well as their willingness to voice their opinions. Some of the mentees were a little shy, and others had a harder time understanding us, but I think everything will end up working out well.

The most difficult part of the day by far was going over stakes, impacts and outcomes with the high school students. First of all, the students didn't really understand what we were trying to get at, and when we tried to explain, we used pretty long and big words without thinking about it. The shyer ones clammed up, the louder ones were silenced by the shyer ones not wanting to talk, some of them spaced out, and others were peer pressured into not talking. The students also tended to self-segregate, sometimes by school and sometimes by race. They also used Tamil and Malay and Chinese to communicate at times, which really didn't help either. But yeah, they all seem really awesome and its going to be lots of fun working with them.

After having met all the mentees and talking to the mentors about it, Kellie, Tian and I assigned mentor-mentee pairs tonight - I hope everything goes well!

Kevin, Kathryn and I also met the local MP today. It was actually really fun! He's really into the environment, and got so excited by SEALNet and PM09 that he really wanted to find a way to get more involved. He was so upset when he found out that his schedule was booked for the next week; not only did he accept our invitation for him to be the Guest of Honour and open at our final day event, but he also requested that he receive some time to address our team/the students. All in all, a very successful meeting.

The team is doing great. Really good debriefing session, in which lots of people talked, and really good Spotlight On. :)

Ugh. Getting eaten alive by mosquitos and bugs. I need to do laundry. I stupidly brought a lot of tank tops because I was worried about the heat, but forgot that we might have some more religious students. So I only have 4 T-shirts with me for 14 days. Intelligent.