Army Training Week

About 3 weeks ago we were suddenly and mysteriously told (like so many things in China!) that all our students would not be attending school the following week as they had to attend army training.  "What for," you ask?  Are they being trained in case China goes to war?  Nope.  It's just for "military education" so they have an idea of what it's like to be in the army.  Fine with us!  We had a week of work with no teaching, which was a great time to do some planning.  Monday was actually a statutory holiday, we worked Tues and Wed, took Friday off to go sightseeing, and on Thurs we drove out on a big bus to visit our kids at the army!

Our kids (48 grade 10s) were taken about 2 hours west of Shanghai (inland) where they, along with another 2000 grade 10s from other schools, did drills, marching, obstacles courses, shooting practice (with fake guns apparently), and team-building stuff.  Their days went from 6am to 10pm for 5 days straight.  The whole week it was about 35 degree Celsius with no wind and the poor kids had to wear the full army fatigues: long camoflouge pants, shirts, jackets, and some chose to wear hats so they wouldn't get a tan (which is a bad thing for Asian girls b/c they all want to look pasty white, which I really don't understand).  Anyways, on with the story.  The army training was held at a place called "Oriental Land", which is a really hard place to describe.  Basically it's similar to a massive theme/amusement park that covers hundreds of acres and doesn't have rides, but instead is filled with parks, a giant lake, a hotel, and facilities to house and train national athletes for swimming, rowing, etc.  It wasn't the normal army grounds, but is often used for big groups such as this.  

Anyways, when we arrived there on Thurs morning we found our kids who were all lined up and ready to march off to their next activity.  We felt SO bad for them since it was so hot out, but it was also kind of funny to see them all dressed up like little soldiers.  

 It was actually almost lunch time by then, so we walked over to the giant hall where they ate all their meals, which was like a huge Chinese house/castle.  Quite nice actually.  Here's a picture from a distance:

The kids all had to line up outside in front of the hall and a real soldier yelled at them for a while (into the microphone no less), saying who-knows-what.  The kids just stood there at attention and didn't make a peep.  Then the principal of our school (who had also come along that day) made a little speech into the microphone.  The whole time us teachers were standing in the shade near the entrance to the building and all the kids in their full-on army-heat-suits were standing under the blazing sun.  Again, poor them.  Here's a picture:

Finally they got to go inside to eat, as did we.  Us teachers got the special dining room upstairs and apparently had better food than the kids did (although I thought the lunch was gross).  After lunch we walked around the grounds a bit and saw all sorts of interesting buildings, including one in the shape of a whale (again, for no apparent reason.... are you noticing a theme here in China??).  Here's a pic:

After a little while, an extended-cab golf cart drove up out of nowhere and we (teachers) were asked to board it.  This turned out to be a really cool tour of Oriental Land where we were shown the lake, the parks, etc.  The very very very best part of this whole ride was when we got to get out at "Fun Bridges".  Just as the name suggests, these were bridges that were fun!  As you can see from the following pictures, there were about 20 different kinds of bridges, all spanning a swampy man-made canal, about 15-20 feet in width.  The object was to cross these challenging bridges without falling in, which proved to be quite a feat with some of them.  

Like I said, this was by far my favorite part of the day.  I was SO sweaty after trying most of the bridges, but it was fully worth it.  I couldn't help but think of my brothers Steve and Austin the whole time and how much fun we'd all have on these together (and I'm SURE we'd ALL end up in the swampy canal after some tom-foolery!).

The last stop on our Oriental Land tour was a giant walk-way/open mall that had loads of statues of historically famous people to the left and right, along with little plaques of what they'd accomplished in life.  It would have been a very nice area to browse had it not been 35 degrees!  Here's a couple pictures of the best ones:

Andrew hanging out with Isaac Newton.

This one of Beethoven was taken soley for my dad... hope you enjoy it, Dad!

If you're wondering why I'm suddenly posting so many entries on this blog recently (after a few weeks of a dry spell), it's b/c we have the week off.  I'm not sure if I explained it in one of my previous posts, but it's National Holiday week here.  It's been really nice to have the time to go sight-seeing, get extra sleep, work out, etc.  And it's also been a good time to write some posts.  I'm sure you can expect a couple more in the next few days before we head back to work.