We Go Up, We Go Down - Part 2 (Oct 24)

Wake up call at 7:30 with a nice cup of hot tea. You know... I could really get used to this!
Warm water arrived for washing up... breakfast and tent checks.
Kuku is trying to ensure that the kids not only have a good time but that they learn something at the same time. All the kids come from fairly priviledged families where they have maids who do everything for them. It's a challenge to teach them to be contientious and responsible and to look after themselves (besides the fact that they're teenagers).

We started our hike up. Kuku had everyone in single file, we were bringing up the rear. The pace was nice and easy. Our camp is at a little over 8K feet. Today we're hiking up to a little over 9K feet. It was a fairly short hike up and back - not too steep, through some meadows where horses were grazing. Only about 3 hours in total. We stopped several times to do this breathing exercise that floods the system with oxygen (the kids were still adjusting to the altitude). You stand with your feet hip width apart and as you take a deep breath in through your nose, you raise your arms out to the sides at shoulder height and raise up onto your toes. You hold for a second or two and then exhale forcefully through the mouth while lowering your arms and heels.

Spending time with the kids from HK has made something obvious to us... teenagers are teenagers... everywhere. They hung out in thier cliques, they rarely listen, they're loud and boisterous and they snack on junk food, alot! Some of them, I'm sure, had their entire backpack filled with junk food! We think one of them even had dried noodles.

Three or four of them likely found the entire experience life changing but we think for most of them it won't be a conscious change. Miss J (one of the teachers) had to remind them several times that their parents weren't there, that their nana wasn't there and there was no one who was going to pick up after them.

We returned to camp in time for lunch while the kids broke up into their pre-determined work groups to prepare the activities they would be presenting when they went to the orphanage in Delhi. Once they had that under control, Kuku asked Brad if he could conduct an impromptu group exercise for leadership and teambuilding. Brad was on the spot "oh crap... what do I do?" were his actual words as I recall.

Of course, in his typical, wing it, fly by the seat of his pants fashion (while avoiding the 6P's ... proper preparation prevents piss poor presentations) he managed to come up with some awesome ideas... all without props.

The main group was too big so we had to split it into smaller groups and we also wanted to break up the cliques while making them interact and maybe feel a bit out of their comfort zones. We used the lava pit rescue exercise which Brad ran. In this exercise, we had 7 of the kids stand on a 2x8 board we found that was approximately 7 feet long. The object of the exercise is to have one person move from one end of the board to the other without anyone stepping off and dying a horrible death in the lava pit. This exercise was mainly about communication and teamwork and in trusting your team.

The next exercise was the trust fall. I ran the trust fall assisted by Miss Thomson (teacher number 2). In this exercise I paired each of the teens off - still trying to mix it up a bit. One person stands with their back to the other and falls back, trusting that the person behind them will catch them. The purpose.. obviously, is trust. I discovered that many of them actually had trouble with this one. I guess teenagers just don't trust each other!

The last activity was the pillow toss run by Miss J. The students stood in a circle and tossed a pillow back and forth until Miss J says stop. At that point, the person with the pillow has to say something nice/positive about the person who threw them the pillow. The purpose was to try and learn how to be positive and give supportive feedback (since we're all pretty overtrained on recognizing and verbalizing the negative).

Two of the groups seemed to have a really good time and an overall positive experience from all three exercises. One group had trouble with all three activities and Brad said they died regularly by stepping into the lava pit. Miss J loved the pillow toss and the trust fall. In the quick debrief afterward to explain to the kids why we had them doing what they did, they asked if we trusted them. Kuku jumped up and had the smallest girl catch him in the trust fall. It was a complete hit!

After that was free time until dinner. We sat with Kuku, Miss J and Miss Thomson drinking some very smooth Indian rum mixed with Evian - "special tea" from coffee cups. It was quite delicious... and I think Kuku may have converted Brad entirely.

Tomorrow's hike is a long one so after dinner... straight to bed.