On Saturday the 27th October 2001, a large group of companion volunteers and Camp Quality staff set off to the Sun Yat Sen Hospital to take our mainland campers on their third day camp to the Guangzhou Zoo and Ocean World. We arrive at our familiar conference hall on the 26th Fl of the Sun Yat Sen hospital and met up with some of our mainland volunteers and medical staff. Everyone then helped to set up the conference venue for our tea party prior before our camp to Ocean World. We were expecting around 150-200 people for this morning event. As the families started arriving and the companions were introduced to their campers, there was a real sense of everyone being a part of a huge family; the parents surprisingly appeared very comfortable with our companions taking care of their kids. Everyone was very friendly, especially the campers who all seemed to want to give us a big smile wherever we went! It was also nice too see a few familiar faces and the support of those parents too, everyone looked like they were having great fun already and we had not even set off yet!!

After speeches by Prof Huang & Prof Fong, two prominent figures in childhood cancer treatment at the Sun Yat Sen Hospital, our staff went on to explain the purpose and objectives of Camp Quality. Cancer patients and the parents where given the opportunity to share their feelings and experiences with their families present. Finally, the climax of our morning function was our Camp Quality music video showed for the first time in Guangzhou.

After the tea party, we set off with our 40 new campers, the kids most of them new to Camp Quality ranged from the ages of 5 to 18 years old. For many this was their first time "going to camp" without their parents. The bus ride wasn't very long, and everyone chattered away, having found and made new friends with those around.

Our first stop was Guangzhou Zoo (Ocean World was within the Zoo grounds), everyone was so excited to get inside, we quickly scanned over the map to see which parts we wanted to spend our hour looking at. This Zoo is the largest of its type in Southern China and occupies a total area of 43 hectares with over 450 species of animals on display.

Our next stop was the popular Ocean Theatre, where adorable marine mammals show off their spectacular tricks. Dolphins & sea lions were shown here, jumping, diving and somersaulting, which kept the kids, glued to their seats and quiet for 30 minutes of the performance! However the highlight of the day must have been where two of our kids were chosen to take center stage and perform with the marine mammals (we had to twists a few arms here for this favour!) Another two of our kids were able to greet one of the dolphin's face to face on the upper level too! The kids love the show since for most; it was a first time for the kids present. It was very amusing to see their little cute faces light up when they saw the mammals perform their tricks.

After lunch, we all descended to Ocean World, which opened approximately two years ago and is a maritime amusement park which houses over 10,000 marine creatures of over 200 species living in a huge aquarium which you can view at a short range by walking through an underwater tunnel.

Ocean World was to most of the kids a completely "new world", they were completely mesmerized as the exciting mysteries of the underwater world unfold right in front of their eyes! The center hosted a fantastic array of marine creatures including a few 6 foot long giant groupers and a couple of gigantic turtles which some of the kids were thrill to have got an opportunity to touch.

The best part for most the kids was the Shark Aquarium, here they were able to watch a group of trainers feed a bunch of pretty fierce sharks, (I guess they were hungry!) I hate to imagine what the sharks could have done to the trainers who were feeding them if anything had gone wrong!

All too soon, it was time to say goodbye and dropped the kids back to their parents, some of our companions, if they could, would have probably prefer to take their campers back home with them!

Final Note:

We had time to do a mini tour of the ward for those who were too sick to attend our day trip with us. Looking around the ward there were so many children with nothing to do, or not being able to do much. we really wished we could do more to help. There was a girl in the ward, she was already registered as a camper with us, however could not join us this time because she was on treatment. She turned out to be a whiz at origami. She spent a good part of the next half an hour teaching us how to make various paper animals and shapes. Amazingly, she knew how to do all of these off by heart; we were waiting for her to charge us for her teaching skills. As we left the ward this time, I thought about our past year's events at with the Sun Yat Sen hospital. I must admit we were pretty worried and didn't know what to expect when Camp Quality started with our mainland camps but I can truly say, it's been an unforgettable experience for all of us. We really hope to be able to do more with our mainland campers knowing we had helped to raised the quality of someone's time in need.