This past week we took the 8th grade to Hong Kong for an outdoor adventure. This trip has been in the making since the first week of school and I have a huge amount of respect for our trip leader and my mentor, Rachel, as well as the other adults on our trip. It was such a fun group to go with but I felt stressed living overseas and then traveling with all these students to a different foreign country. That is a lot of responsibility! We are so lucky that our students are so amazing though-and they are used to traveling a lot, which really helped. They were where they needed to be on time and with all their info. Amazing.
We got off to a rocky start, teaching a full day and then meeting back up at the school at 9 at night with our plane leaving at 2 in the morning. The kids barely slept and we arrived in Hong Kong at 7 in the morning (they are 2 hours ahead of us) greeted by 2 very awake and enthusiastic members of Asia Pacific Adventures-the company we were rollin with. Then an hour long bus ride to Sai Kung where I got to see a little taste of Hong Kong out of the bus window. There were tall sky scrapers everywhere and it was gray and overcast and a little misty as we drove. Even though Hong Kong is a super packed city, it felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the concrete crowded jungle that is Dhaka and this is saying a lot. Even though it's a crowded city, the harbors with a mix of new boats and old Chinese junks and fishing boats were so refreshing and there was still tons of green everywhere-at least compared to Dhaka where grass doesn't seem to grow. We stayed in a sea scout camp near a small town called Sai Kung for 3 nights.
When we got to the spot we were staying it was a sea scout camp and it was dormitories with a little kitchen and showers. Very basic stuff and everything was wet and a little mildewy. The beds we had to sleep on were like boards covered in vinyl like you would have on motorboat seat covers. After 36 hours of very little sleep, I was missing my cushy bed and duvet at home. The kids were kept plenty busy this first day with team building activities and games while we got a little downtime. It is so funny to be on the "adult" side of things for pretty much the first time in my life and I almost felt like I should be mixed in with the students playing games and doing map activities but was glad I wasn't. I didn't even notice how uncomfortable my bed was that night because I was so tired and passed out early.
The next two days the kids were divided into 2 groups; one group did a full day trek through a gorge in this park about 45 minutes away and the other stayed at the site and did sea kayaking and map skills and a little scavenger hunt. I went with the group to the gorge. We drove up the mountain in thick dense fog so we couldn't see anything much.
The trek was awesome-it was so nice to be out in nature and see moving water that wasn't toxic green and skanky. We had to scramble over rocks and go up this waterfall zig zag and shimmy across a wet rock face. It was not easy stuff, it was very very challenging for a lot of our students. We got to a deep swimming hole and they all jumped in a swam after sweating all morning. On the hike down the mountain the fog had finally lifted and we could see all around us. It was sunny and you could see right down into the harbors below. The kids were tired after a long day of hiking but every night one group was on kitchen duty and another group was on clean up duty. The kids were responsible for cooking meals for everyone and then washing dishes. It was so good for them-some of our kids have grown up in the Bangladeshi and ex-pat culture and had maids and servants (which are incredibly cheap on this side of the world) and have never had to cook or clean a dish in their lives. There was very little complaining though, I were having fun cooking with their friends and laughing. They were so proud of the meals they cooked and kept asking us if we liked it, which was cute. The next day the students switched groups and did the opposite.
There were 6 of us chaperones on the trip and 3 people hung back at the dorms while the other 3 of us went out that night to the seafood markets and bars in downtown Sai Kung. The seafood markets were amazing-these plastic tubs stacked in layers with crazy looking seafood in them. So cool! We had a delicious dinner of clams in oyster sauce, breaded craps, a shrimp linguine, and steamed bok choi-kind of like an Asian tapas. We had cold beers that tasted absolutely delicious. We found a sports bar that had a lot of loud Brits and Aussies watching some rugby match and got few more beers on draft. Things I miss living in Dhaka-this. Sitting in a bar and enjoying a beer. The night ended with a 1:30 am McDonald's run-chicken McNuggets and french fries. Last time I had this I think I was 15-it was delicious. We got in a sketcky taxi who took us in the wrong direction and there was a total breakdown of communication. We finally got back to the sea scout camp where they had locked the gates on us. So our 2nd night of the 8th grade class trip ended with us hopping the fence into the sea scout camp after a night of seafood, beers, and McDonalds. Sooo glad I went on the gorge trek that first day because the next day was a little painful.
When it was time to go to the island we took a Chinese junk boat ride early in the morning that was an hour long. It was so incredibly foggy that we couldn't see anything. We reached the island and unloaded the gear. It was a 15 minute walk to the campsite and I was surprised by how much litter and trash was around. There are a few people who live on the island and then people from the mainland take trips out during the weekends. It's expensive I guess to get things off the island so there was just so much trash around. The campsite was nice though and litter free. The students had an excercise in putting up their tents and setting up the site so it was usable and then they did one activity of the four rotations leaving the other 3 for the next day. There was rock climbing, repelling, terrilion, and a survival skills challenge. I did the repelling with one group that first day-absolutely terrifying! You have to repel down a sheer cliff face with crashing waves at the bottom in dense fog. You can't see how far down it is either until you're on the edge because you're clipped onto a line. Some of our students really overcame some fears doing this stuff and surprised themselves. Even the students who didn't complete every challenge fully made huge strides in their own ways.
Camping outside was really nice and I was not missing my bed at home any longer. I loved waking up in my tent (adults had our own tents, students shared with 4 to 6 people) early with the sun and hearing nature sounds and passing ships in the water. The island was once the site of an old Chinese fort from the 1600's and 1700's and they had restored the base of it. It was a really cool place and while not all our students were thrilled about sharing a small tent with 6 people, roughing it, and peeing in a hole in the ground or out in the woods, they all took something out of it and bonded with each other, which was the goal.
The trip ended with the students doing an adventure race for 2 hours around the whole island where they had to apply all the skills they had learned throughout the week. We took a boat ride back a different way and were picked up by a bus to go to the airport. The whole trip I was so impressed by the APA staff-they had both technical skills and were so incredibly patient with our students and good natured and made it so fun for them. This is an experience that they will never forget. At the airport, the students got their Burger King and Starbucks that they had been craving. I got a Chai Tea Latte and was a happy girl :). Now back to Bangladesh and real life.
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