Last week I went to the Beijing Summer camp, and it mainly learns about the growth of our minds. There are 26 people whose age varies from 6-16, and they all come from different contries. Now i will write about some memorable things that happened in the camp. Um... I will start with teamwork. We had 3 teams, and we worked together on the first day to complete our team flag, the team song and the logo for our team. It was really fun to work with a group, and i think that we have the best team! We live in a small hotel, with 2 people in a room, but there is air-con~ everyday in beijing is scorching and dry, so the air-con made the whole thing much easier. For the classes, there is a classroom in the hotel and a whiteboard, so we would go to class there. I think that the facilities and the enviroment, compared to CTY, is uncomparable, because in CTY, we had great facilities and there were about 300 people in the camp so our activities were much more fun. In CTY, we ate lunch in the cafeteria and they served many different foods from all over the world, like a buffet! On the other hand, in the Beijing Camp, we ate lunch at this resturant nearly everyday, mainly because it's a cheap resturant, and the most thing there is----rice.
Now i am going to told about some of the places we went. We went to the Qing Hua University one day. It didn't make a very deep impression on me, because all i saw was a bunch of trees. Qing Hua University has one of the best greenary in the whole world, but it was very humid, and a riverway they had there was stinky and dirty. WE EVEN HAD TO PAY MONEY TO GET IN THERE! I think that even the university is becoming more of a tourist site, China is too obessessed with money that they even want to make money out of the education. But there was a pond with lotus flowers, and they told us that the poem "荷塘月色" was originally written there by the author, but I saw nothingbut a bunch of flowers, so it was, well, how to say, a little too mental for me.
The afternoon of that day, we went to the technology museum. I learned about many things, including dicibels and things about the earth. The next day we were told to share about what we learned during the museum, and something that I disliked very much happend. There was 2 children that were six, and they are too young to go in the museum alone, so the camp leader gave them to a 15-year old boy. He lead them around the whole museum to play with them and took them to places they wanted to go, and it was really hard work. He didn't learn much himself because he was taking care of the children, and he said that at the reflection. Then the camp leader said that his second purpose was to take care of the kids, the main thing that he needs to do is to learn in the museum, which he did not do, and that he didn't listen to the instructions. We were all enraged with her, because she went off herself and walked around while giving the kids to the boy, and then when he is really tired, she tells him that he needs to learn in the museum. If she is not happy with it, why doesn't she do it herself?
So ermm... we went to this place to do outward bound training. We started out in the morning and walked 20 kilometers to the place. We got there at about noon, then we climbed the facilities there and then walked back to our hotel. It was a tiring day, but everyone was puzzled by where the camp director was when we were walking. She took the bus when we were walking! I didn't like how the camp director was so selfish. She didn't like kids at all, and treated us like a mission, so she can get it over with quickly. But the instructors were really nice~!
Even though there was some unfavorable things about this camp, i still learned some things. We went to the National Museum, and many of the artifacts from the old times were broken or sabotaged by outsiders, so I think that it is every Chineses' responsibility to protect the artifacts with our greatest effort. Also on the first day, we learned about goals and how to accomplish them. I thought a lot about my goals and listed out a numeral of goals, big and small, and I thought that having goals made the path of my life wider and clearer. Something to mention, there is a 8-year old boy from Germany, who don't know much Chinese in the camp. He started on the first day learning some new words, and because we all had to write reflections that were either 250, 300 or 500 letters, he got way much better at Chinese at the end! So I think that this camp improves your Chinese~ Even my Chinese writing got better because of the compositions.