...What a two days!!!!

It's around 3:00 Hong Kong time and we just got back from our camping trip...wow was it an experience. Before we left we had a welcoming ceremony at Aw Boon Secondary School (picture of school is below) where we were all presented with gifts, after the welcoming ceremony the group then headed off too eat complements of the school...tyler and barber along with myself and others got a taste of chicken foot....for those of you who have never had it, you aren't missing much! After eating we went back to the school and then got ready for our camping trip, in all about six teachers and thirty some studnets went. We took mass transit to get to the Island (mass transit = a double decker bus and a charter bus). Lets just say the charter bus experience was wild...it was almost like a roller coaster, it would be like driving a bus to stamping ground...going 70 mph! Once we got to Lan Tau Island we hiked to our camping spot which was a youth hostel located close to the famous Po Lin Monastery (home to buddhist monks). We got settled in our rooms at the hostel (about as big as the bathroom at school, inch thick matresses, double beds with about 8 people in each room)...lets just say this allowed us to appricate home alot :) After getting settled in we played some "ice breaker" games like the human knot (below is a picture of the kids doing the human knot) and games to learn each others names....then came the night walk. The entire group was seperated into three smaller groups and each group had to complete a different task along a trail called "Wisdom Path" (hopefully the kids and myself will have more wisdom after being on this path). The picture above is the SC Kids at one of the landmarks on Wisdom Path. The tall things are carved in half trees each include a Buddhist saying and they are in the shape of an eight (infinity) if looked at from the aerial view, these were made by the monks that live on site! The students worked their way through different tasks in the adventure camp that was set up by our Hong Kong Educators. At this camp the students learned many new skills that dealt with collaboration, teamwork, communication (with students of different cultures). The eduators from Hong Kong have really gone out of their way to make this trip a memorable trip for our students, while camping our students were even featured on a radio call in show for all most a full hour! This is definately going to be a once and a life time experience for all of all students and adminstrators!-DTW