Camping!?in China

This weekend, the male section of our youth group travelled into the Western Hills to camp, while the females roughed it in a wonderful hotel in downtown Kunming. Because I am a man and slept on the ground, my photos will only depict the exploits of the young men's trip. Sorry ladies. Evidently the young women were too "precious and lovely in His sight" to rough the great outdoors:)).
On Friday, after school, we hoped onto a bus (and into three smaller vehicles) and drove into the Western Hills. The 'road' we took easily surpassed any byway I have ever been on in terms of outright engineering frightfulness. Switchbacks, of which there were many, held very little bank and offered little in the way of taming the precipitous slope our tiny bus was being whipped into climbing. You could barely call it paved, as well. Often times, our driver would honk as he came around sharp turns. Evidently, if you honk and get into a wreck, you are no longer liable, because you made your presence known.

Once our bus reached a point where it could no longer proceed, we hiked the remainder of the way into our idyllic setting. We camped next to a small lake surrounded by small terraced hills supporting a variety of crops, as well as trees. Joe Coco, sorry. We certainly were not what you would call light on our environment. However, we did have a trash pick-up party at the end, and left the place cleaner than when we had arrived.
During most of the weekend, we enjoyed the company of six men from Minnesota who were travelling in the area. They lead campfire songs and spoke to the boys about various topics of concern to young men. We also played some fun games, like soccer through a slightly terraced, mostly wet area down close to the lake. The boys also participated in a boat race out to an island. They had to carry their boat around the island, paddle back, cross the area we used as our soccer field, re-enter the lake on the other side, and use their pellet guns to hit a paper target.
With the requisite camp fires and camp food, the boys mostly managed to have a wonderful, uplifting time with one another. Most of the young men attend KIA, but we also had a couple boys from Holland who are homeschooled. I enjoyed talking to them about their homeland and my trips to the Netherlands with the girls' soccer teams I coached. We talked about croquettes and frikandel, two wonderful Dutch foods. Hopefully, if their family orders any in, I will be treated to some traditional Dutch food. Bart and Willhem (their names) treated us to some dark chocolate from Holland!
However, as all good things must, the weekend came to an end, and now I have Les Miserables essays to correct for the seniors and The Scarlet Letter essay tests to grade for the juniors. I hope the students and the administration understand if I feel a bit flustered this week for not having been able to prepare properly. Maybe He can grant me some extra energy to get stuff done. In anycase, we had a wonderful time.

Roland