Camp

The middle schoolers all left school en masse on Wednesday morning. In a big trail of 225 students, we walked to the train station. We filled up five train cars as we rode to the Ma On Sha station. From there it was a five minute walk to the YMCA camp.

YMCA Hong Kong maintains a beautiful, five-acre facility here in the New Territories. It was fourteen kids and one teacher per cabin.

For the next three days, we swam in the pool, played ultimate Frisbee, and had cabin devotions together. We had grade-level tug-of-wars, played a round of after-dark find-the-eighth-graders, played a live-action, life-sized game of Clue with the teachers dressed as Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, Mrs. Claus, The Golfer, and so on. We hiked in a nature preserve and encountered some intimidating monkeys on the trail.

We ate camp food in the cafeteria. We sang one too many rounds of “Fried Ham, fried ham, cheese and bologna and after the macaroni, we’ll have onions and pickles and pretzels and then we’ll have some more fried ham.” We had several sessions of worship and speakers.

We roasted hotdogs and made s’mores. We had a bon fire. We stayed up past “lights out.” The kids ate all the junk food they had packed instead of clean underwear. We all got too much sun and drank too little water.

The kids did skits that included a Michael Jackson tribute, lots of prat falls, and some teacher imitations.

It was thirty years in the making, but I had my revenge on all the camp councilors I ever had. At 7:00 a.m. each morning, it was my turn to bang a large metal spoon on a garbage can lid and sing loudly and off-key “Rise and shine and give God the glory, children of the Lord!” The boys seem to hate it as much as I did when I was the one burying my head under the pillow.

Thursday, I had the opportunity to be the speaker for our evening session. I built my talk around my burn accident in July. My theme was God is in Control. I was a little anxious, but the kids (and my colleagues) responded well.

Some things seem to be the same no matter where you go around the globe. Eighth-grade boys use way, way too much Axe spray deodorant (or “deo” as they like to call it). A boy dropping his shorts on stage to reveal his pink boxers is guaranteed to get the biggest laugh of the night. And sadly, a majority of the eighth-grade girls would rather cluster up in the shade of the one small awning than put on their suits and go frolic in the pool in full view of the eighth-grade boys. Seventh-grade boys who drink coffee (with two creams and three sugars) think that they are really hot stuff.

And Friday afternoon when we were done at the YMCA which was five minutes from the train station and twenty five minutes from school, we simply dismissed the kids. Yup, we teachers all just waved goodbye as the kids fanned out into Hong Kong most of them heading for the train station and presumably home.

A strange experience for this teacher from the suburbs of Chicago.

Hong Kong is a lot more pedestrian friendly and a lot less litigious than what I’m used to.


-Jack