Beijing 2008 Recap

So I have had quite a few people asking me about my trip since I have been back in the states and towards the end of my trip I was extremely busy with both finishing up our days at camp, trying to fit in every last trip we wanted to make and finally the goodbyes that we had to say to both our kids... my favorite little person in the world who still to this day I think of all the time.. and my staff who I am proud to say I still keep in contact with most of them. I currently am starting up the training sessions for Camp Adventure and working with Brady to try to make this year as successful as all of the previous. We didn't have as many people come out this year as we have had in the past but we decided that that was ok due to the economy and the fact that we really did pick up some really qualified students... AND WSU WON THE RECRUITMENT TALLY over UofI so that was a really great thing meaning we will not have to travel to Idaho for training days!!

Well anyways my point of typing up this new blog entry was to recap and reflect on my trip, I realized that I missed a lot of important parts of my trip because usually when I was writing I was reflecting on my weekend or camp activities but I missed a lot of important parts not to mention the OLYMPICS! Which were absolutely amazing!

So here is a short recap.
I left for Beijing China on June 9, 2008. I got to departure with one of my close guy friends from WSU, Brady, and we flew from Seattle directly to Tokyo, Japan where we HAAAAD to track down this little bar that Brady had visited in the airport the previous year... It was not that great but off we were to change into our camp uniforms, which we were suppose to be wearing the entire trip, and then to our gate where we met our staff.

So the first couple weeks went by pretty fast and we grew to become really close with our fellow camp counselors and took on the task of learning some chinese which soon after we gave up due to the fact that it is one of the hardest languages in the world to pick up on... or at least that is what it felt like. We decided to stick to our basic words such as Ni Hao (Hello), Sei Shen (Thank You), Lousher (Teacher, a much easier way to explain why we were in there than a camp counselor), Dwe (Yes), and our soon to be favorite word to use... Boo Yao (NO!!).

So in short, we saw so many things while we were there and we were contracted through the US embassy which gave us access to a safe base if something were to go wrong, but even better it gave us Danielle who became our new best friend. Danielle worked for the Embassy and she had been living in China for quite a long time which made her very fluent in speaking Chinese as well as knowing where to go, who to believe, and the ins and outs to their culture... including the shopping tips for the markets. Without her I am positive my parents would have killed me because I would have been calling home for money every week!

Danielle hooked us up with absolutely amazing adventures such as Spa trips, yoga retreats, markets to visit and last but not least our trip to the Great Wall! That was by far my favorite and I have talked about most of these adventures previously so I will not make you read about them again! Ooh and she gave us probably the coolest present EVER! Our Olympic sunglasses which to this day I still wear and Teej constantly makes fun of me and is embarrassed to be seen with me wearing them!

I would like to recap on my camp experience because I feel like a lot of what I have written about previously has been about my travels when really one of my favorite things about China were the kids I worked with. They changed my life and I can only hope that I had half the impact on them as they had on me. Not to say all of my kids were angels, in fact I had my moments with all of them but to see that I could impact a set of twins, Marvin and Sedric, who upon arrival had no intent of talking, participating or listening (in fact they wanted nothing but their mommy the first couple weeks). They were my best friends by the end of the summer and it was amazing how the kids that you hope don't return the next week, are always there and in the end they are really the heart break that you are leaving behind with tears in their eyes. I will never forget those little boys from Singapore...

And of course there was my baby Quinn who brought tears to my eyes on his last day. We have a tradition at camp that at the end of the day we have a closing period where we calm the kids down before they return to their parents. During this period we have a song called Lean On Me (not the version everyone knows but a slower version) where we learn the sign language in training and we teach it to the kids and we play it during closing. Well anyways, Quinn was only 5 I believe but every time we would do the signs to it, he would find me and mimic my moves and have the brightest smile on his face. He actually would sign the whole song even when most of the kids would be talking and not paying attention and he would have his little eyes on me.

And not to ramble on but there was one more little girl, Eliena. She was a little Chinese girl who DID NOT want to speak English in the least bit. She was very fluent and knew exactly what we were saying when we would talk to her but she did not want to listen or talk back. Another thing she DID NOT like was swimming which was something we did every day. So one of the weeks I was her group leader and I decided that she was going to swim and I was going to convince her that it was the coolest thing in the world. So I put a life jacket on (because all of the 4 and 5 year olds pretty much had to wear them) and got it and after about 20 minutes of trying to convince her it was the coolest thing in the world, she finally got up the guts to get in. After that she used to come up to me before swimming whenever I would be swimming with her and grab my hand and smile.

So these four kids were definately my impact children and I will never forget them, the memories they gave me or the tears they brought to my eyes when I had to say goodbye to them.

ANYWAYS!! I have to go take a test and stop procrastinating... but I will continue when I get back.