today we joined the greater h/s community for a combined outing to e s'pore heritage fest.

now persoanlly i'm not one for remembering war heroes, nor for packaging "fighting" as something to be proud of. so i was a bit concerned about e content of this fest, and what/how it wd be presented.... but i thought, "well, give it a try...but be prepared to walk away."

so what did i think? the puppet story was a bit too gory imho. likewise e mention during storytime, of "a soldier who was strung upside-down from a tree and tortured by being poked in the side with bayonets",  (app they'd bn divided up into diff groups so the presentations cd be made more "age-appropriate". i never saw this happening though... i'd put both my kids in e 4-6yrs group. i was worried about what e grp of 7-9+yr-olds mt be told!)

the fabric collage craft session i found to be the most "safe". kayla's hero was "tiger my cat, cos he's very fierce but friendly".  kynan was stumped and cdnt think of any one hero he'd like to represent... so eventually he just chose something neutral: superman :-)

it was nice to see some familiar faces.... mums & kids we've known from our old playgrp, from chinese class long ago, from montessori now, and even from scouts...  it's indeed a small world here in s'p!

***1 important nugget of knowledge we brought home with us today, is that  you dont hv to be a fighter, to be a hero.  we learned 3 examples of this...

-Elizabeth Choy took care of the needs of e other prisoners when she herself was suffering. this was a selfless act. she was a heroine. we too, can take care of the needs of others around us~ in our group of friends, in our communities, in our homes...even if we think we feel worse  than them... ie less strength, less money, less time...  sill we can rise above these, for the good of those around us!

-another chap, a teacher with a strange long name, got together some men to build a wall to protect this country against the japanese army. they did not fight. they had drive and determination to find another way... that was heroic. this goes to show that smart thinking can be more useful in getting us out of trouble, than fists or weapons.

-a young mum sacrificd her life for that of her loved ones~ her children. she performed a heroic act by warning the eldest, and then pushing the youngest aside as she saw a truck plumetting towards them on a road-crossing. (my ds knows this story as i read it to him from the papers recently)  so risking one's life in the process of performing a selfless act, is obviously something heroic. it also points to the fact that we can be little heroes in our own lives today, just by doing what is right and good at that time...and without always putting ourselves 1st!  (even if we dont qt sacrifice our lives for it!)