1. Our Journey Qing Yuan WWW Trip Grade 9

2. Catapult Team Building

3. Building a catapult was pretty easy considering what we had to build on camping night. Honestly I did not understand what the point was of us learning how to build a catapult because we would never really need to know how to but at the camp site I realized we learned how to build it as a practice for building our own tents that night. Knowing the knots and how to tie one bamboo to the other was helpful and after building the catapult we had some fun with a balloon fight.

4. Rock Climbing

5. Rock climbing was better than I had expected. I really did not want to go rock climbing because I get scared of falling and find it hard to hold onto rocks and pull myself up. I usually am ok with rock climbing on actual rock climbing walls but when it comes mountains with real rocks I don’t do so well. However I tried my best, not getting too far up, but was the first girl in our group and climbed without thinking of being afraid of falling. For this activity we had to work on our complex thinking by figuring our where would be best to hold on to get us higher up and closer to our goal.

6. “Most painful experience…” Biking

7. Biking was a fun activity with a beautiful view. Many groups who had gone before mine had come back telling me I wouldn’t handle it because it was too hard but I surprised myself by going all the way without getting too tired. To be honest, the ride wasn’t too hard, but EXTRMELLY painful. The seats on the bike were rock hard and The road was really bumpy so our butts would hit the seat and would hurt really bad. At one point, the two girls in front of me stumbled over some puddles of water on the floor and as I was hitting the break so I wouldn’t hit them my front tire got stuck in a hole on the floor and my bike flipped over with me on it. I ended up falling on my shoulder, scrapping my knees and my hands and hitting my shin on the bike’s gear but got right up again and went back to biking.

8. Biking overall was a different experience. We had to accept whatever happened and continue biking. It was a long ride and very, very painful but I got through it and am proud of it. For this activity, the ESLRs we ended up using were communicating effectively and working collaboratively because whenever there was a puddle in front of us or a ditch or anything dangerous we would have to signal to the other bikers behind us to make sure they were aware of the safety issues. We would also have to let the biker behind us know when we would be stopping so they wouldn’t crash into our backs due to their high speed and sudden stops.

9. English teaching in Chinese school School Service

11. Teaching was a difficult activity and we all realized how hard it is to be in a class when all your students don’t pay attention and don’t listen to you. Our first classroom was noisy and there were these three boys in the back who wouldn’t listen no matter what. Some of the kids in that class were behaving well, listening and repeating whatever we told them to repeat but some were very stubborn. Our second class behaved much better, they were polite and cooperated well. They were also shy and it was hard to get them to make groups mixed with guys and girls but other than that they participated extremely well. For teaching we had to use our complex thinking when they got out of control to figure out how we would handle it, global citizenship, personal management, work collaboratively and communicating effectively.

12. Group Tranny Caving

13. Caving was the best activity we did all week in Qing Yuan. I worked with Andy, Luke, Matthew, Chris and Peter to find clues hidden around the cave. The cave was dark and slippery so it was hard to walk around but it was fun working together and helping each other out. It was also the best activity because it was the only time we got to chose who we wanted to work with and have some “free-time” with our friends. For this activity we were required to use our critical thinking and working collaboratively to be successful. Our group did very well on both of those ESLRs and were able to be the first ones to win the challenge.

14. “Most stressful activity we had, almost got into a huge fight with the girls.” Camping

16. Camping was probably the most frustrating thing I had to do this year. We had to build our own tents with two sticks of bamboo, a small tarp, a bigger tarp, some pegs and a small mosquito net. We had seven girls sharing one tent, all mad at each other because we were running out of light and we had no idea how to put our tent up yet. We were also furious at one of our instructors, Patty, because he would come over and tell us we should give up when we were already in a horrible mood, or he would come over, hammer our bamboos, break them, then walk away without helping us fix it. After 2 hours of nothing, Mr. Breen and Brandon came over to help us put our tents up since we barely had any light left. We spent most of the night mad at each other and everyone else but at night we went back to being friends and talking as usual. In the tent, it was very crowded and hard to sleep because JunJun and Maddie were on a slope and we were all cold and didn’t have enough space to move around but overall I think it was a great experience for all of us to learn from. For this activity we used complex thinking, working collaboratively and global citizenship.

17. Pan Family Home