Our First Sandcastle

It started off with a thunderstorm when we first reached. We had to hide under a makeshift tent at the Castle Beach, hoping for the rain to subside so we could continue our mission: to learn how to build sandcastles so we could teach the kids who would be coming down during weekends.

Well, the rain did not exactly subside. But we continued. Mr Alvin Lee, the founder of Castle Beach Ltd, started off by teaching us the very fundamentals, "Sand, water, and pressure, are the key ingredients to a sandcastle piece." With the different tools, he demonstrated how to build walls, towers, and stairways. Things to note: like having a good mix of sand and water as your dough to put in the moulds, and knocking gently before removing the moulds, turned out to be the crucial tips that made it seem so effortless....

So we started. First adding buckets of water to the sand. Then piling the wet sand up to create a firm, strong foundation. "If the foundation is weak, your sandcastle will just crumble, build how nice also no use," was the stern advice given. Shovelling up the sand and patting it firm got us all panting. But the hard part had just only began...

Our stairways were rarely flawless, with the occasional broken stairs in between. "It looks more like a ruined palace we are building," one of my fellow frieds chuckled. "Look, my castle is bota(no top)," said another, pointing at the castle tower with its chipped off tip. And there was the terrible, never ending task of building the connecting walls with those jagged teeths. We finally pulled off, not without the constant help of Mr Lee and his volunteers. With much sweat and tears, we finished off removing all traces of footprints in our masterpiece. Hmm, not a bad start for a first day's training! Forward, Team SOS!

Written by: Tan Jin Mei