Returned from Guizhou

Emily and I returned from Guizhou very early yesterday morning, rolling into bed around 2:30am. We had an incredible time!

We had an enjoyable train ride from Wuhan to a "medium" sized city in Guizhou province called Kaili. We shared a sleeper car cabin with an older lady from Wuhan, and a youngish lady with her son. We boarded quite late (nearly 11pm) and didn't have much conversation until the next morning. But once morning broke and we all become more comfortable with each other the conversation rarely broke until we got off around 1pm. We were really happy with the progress I/we have made in our Chinese.

From Kaili we took a bus to Duyun. We met our friends and stayed with them for two nights to wait for students to arrive, before heading up to the farm/camp they have in the mountains. It was an hour and a half ride up the sides of mountains on sometimes very poorly maintained roads before reaching the top.

The camp we led was for TCK's (Third Culture Children). These are kids who have grown up or spent a significant amount of time outside of their home culture. This year the camp had kids from Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story, but a few activities in brief: we had teaching times in the morning and evening (these focused on things often particular to TCKs, like 'saying goodbye' and friendship - both can be very hard for TCKs because there is so much change in their lives); in between these we did some great activities like hiking to a waterfall, bathing at "the Spa", sliding down "Slippery Rock" (no pictures of that day, sorry), and fun activities in the dark like a bonfire, and 'bathtubbing' (two teams, each with a large and awkward object to carry-like a large wooden bathtub, try to make their way across fields and hills without getting caught by counselors with flashlights; if they're in/on the object they're safe, if not, they lose a point).

Jesse led them in song each day, taught one morning, and together with Emily talked about relationships (dating, courting, marriage, etc).

In all it was an incredible blast!

We returned wiped out and worshiping, thankful that we got to pour into the lives of 'the next generation'.