My Life in China

This Monday I flew out with the year eights to Hainan for a few days of school camp. As I mentioned in a previous post, Hainan is an island just off the Chinese south coast. It’s been treated like a backwater province for years but with the Chinese growing capacity to go for vacations, Hainan is seeing some rapid development as a tourist spot. Sanya, the largest city on Hainan has for some years gotten a lot of Russian tourists, and some signs in the touristic parts are written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Our hotel had a very nice pool.

My hotel room, nice but stone hard beds as usual.

The beach were we had a lot of our activities.

On the Monday we landed at Sanya aiport after about an hour’s flight from Guangzhou and had checked in around lunch time. After lunch it was time for some teambuilding activities on the beach. It was great to leave kids in the hands of the Hainan Adventures leaders during activities, they were great and enthusiastic. On the Tuesday we left for a camping trip in Yanoda rainforest, though it was more of a “rainforest garden” than a proper rainforest, it was a very tourist friendly place. Before camping we did some gorge climbing up some waterfalls, it was great fun!

Yanoda, the rainforest garden.

Yanoda from above.

On Wednesday it was time for some "hiking" but it was more of a walk around a very comfortable path around the “rainforest garden”. By lunch we were back in Sanya and the kids did some more teambuilding activities such as raft building and constructing their own catapults.

A tent above a tent?

The winning team in the raftbuilding contest "Hot Tuna!"

On Thursday we went surfing and “coasteering” which is walking by the coast and climbing the rocks there. Before surfing we also did something called the vertical challenge where we climbed up a 12 meter high platform where we had to jump to other platforms.

The vertical challenge!

On Friday it was time to go home, it was a great week with lots of fun but I was exhausted by the time I got home. Even though the Hainan Adventures leaders managed the activities it’s not an easy job keeping track of 60 students who are 13-14 year olds.. I’m glad I teach the older kids!

The full group.