Fall Camp

About two weeks ago, I had the privilege of going on a camping trip with 31 high school students. We roughed it out on the beach with our tents for a night and then hiked a mountain for five hours the next day. Some team-building games were thrown in there, too, along with eating a dinner comprised of any food we could scrounge up, and then breakfast and lunch the following day at a local restaurant. 

The timing of this trip probably wasn't the best—we went on the trip the day after we had a huge audit of our high school—so we teachers were a bit unorganized and tired, yet the students had a good time anyway. Spending time with the students outside of the classroom always serves as a good reminder why I enjoy being a teacher. Those kids need a lot of love! 

Below are some pictures from the trip. Since I don't believe in lugging cameras around, these were taken with my cellphone... so sorry if some of them aren't clear! I didn't include that many pictures of the students for safety reasons, but there are some pretty neat pictures of the beach and the mountains. China really is beautiful!

City kids setting up their tents.

Here was my tent. Never mind the fact that I had to move the tent in the middle of the
night because I staked it too close to the ocean when the tide came in.

Thankfully it didn't rain, even though it looked like it would.

I know this picture isn't the best quality, but it
shows the beautiful full moon that we had.
No wonder the kids were crazy.

Instant noodles cooked over coals. The students were given a limited amount of money
and had to feed their group members (about 10 in total). This group chose noodles.
My group chose to pay a local store to scramble some eggs for us. Pretty smart!

And this was taken at 5:30 in the morning.

The "sunrise" at 5:30.

A fishing boat heading out for the day.

The rest of these pictures are from the 5 hour hike that we had.
It was a pretty challenging hike! Thankfully we only had one lightly-sprained ankle.

And yes, we finished our hike at the top of the rock that has nothing underneath it. 

Some pretty foliage down below. I wasn't willing to get any closer to
the edge, though, since the drop off was steep.