I just got back from the primary school Christian day camp. I was a student group leader, so don't ask why I was at a primary school one. My group's called Haggai. It's a book of the Bible. And there's this autistic girl in my group, Alicia. Actually, I didn't know she was autistic at first. After I observed her for ten minutes, I came to the conclusion that she was autistic. She started shouting "Can we watch Happy Feet?" halfway through the sermon cause the speaker was talking about the story of Happy Feet. She's a little difficult to handle. Thank goodness her mother came to help out. If not, I'd have gone mad. But I learnt to handle her, soon enough. Today, after lunch and craft in the library(we made bookmarks), her mother was talking with some lady in the library. When I made to leave the library, I suddenly heard: "Leader, can you wait for me?" Alicia. So of course I said yes. We walked back to the chapel, with her chattering along on the way, and me inserting appropriate "yes"s, "u-huh"s and "yeah, that' interesting!" at intervals. I wasn't listening. The day was about tiring me out. We got to the chapel and put our things down. I sat in the pew and leaned my head back against the back of the chair. I was ready to take a nap for fifteen minutes till everyone came back. Then, again came that voice: "Can my Leader go down with me?" Mrs Chua, the camp commandant, came over and asked "Can you go with her?" So I dragged myself out of the chair and said: "Yes, I shall." She thanked me for taking care of her. We went down to the area outside the Heritage Room where the snacks were. I stopped to let some younger primaries pass and I lost Alicia. After I collected my snack, I went around the entire area, circling around again and again, trying to find Alicia. Some people asked me: "Why're you searching for her? you don't need to." but I felt I was responsible for her. All the rest of my group I know they can take care of themselves, but I didn't know about Alicia. I found her safe(thanks God!)sitting on the steps of the concourse, eating custard pies and drinking chrysanthemum tea. The rest of the group knows about her but they're kinda mean. They shout at her. Like during rehearsal, we were discussing stuff in the Control Room of the chapel, and Alicia was busy shooing away all the people who stood outside the window. Halfway through she started saying loudly something about God giving us power to defeat our enemies, the other groups, at this play. She wouldn't stop talking about it. And she wouldn't stop saying that she wanted to play with the controls. So I as the leader had to dissuade her. And the group people wouldn't stop saying mean stuff and shouting at her. I'm really tired. I don't feel like going back and confronting yet another day with handling Alicia, spending another day doing headcounts every five minutes, dealing with another day telling the group to stop shouting at Alicia, the stress of being a group leader, being a good role model, which means no swearing in front of the little kiddies. I haven't slipped up yet. And many people know the extent of my language....I'm tired. Just one more day. Just one more day.