For many students it was their first ever trip like this and was indeed a very daunting task. There were many firsts – first time cooking for themselves, sleeping in a tent, carrying a full (often too full!) backpack, using a map and compass, hiking, and first time as a real team member. Scattered amongst the 4 groups were students experienced in hiking/camping around the world, but faced their own challenges in helping lead their groups and dealing with the frustrations of the various abilities in the group. As is always the case in the International Award many lessons were learned, everyone expanded their personal comfort zones, fun was had, and challenges met. Within a week of finishing many were already asking about where they would go for the Silver! Well done to all students and we certainly look forward to next years’ Silver Adventurous Journey.

Please click here to view pictures from the trip to Nanbeihu.

From a student participant’s perspective…

Jenna Jimin Yoon 10S

On 18 of March, year 10 IA students started a journey to Nanbeihu. On Friday after the second period, we went down stairs to the reception and loaded our rucksacks in the bus trunk. After that, we started our two and a half hour bus ride to Nanbeihu. Because we departed secondary campus at 11am, we had to eat lunch on the bus. We ate sandwich, rice balls, crisps and sweets on the bus, but we had to eat very slowly so that we wouldn’t want to throw up in the middle of the bus journey. After chatting with friends for about two hours, we arrived at Nanbeihu’s camping site. It was a bit rainy but fortunately it wasn’t pouring. We got off from the bus, got our rucksacks and gathered around in front of the hotel near our camping site. First thing we did was to sort out the groups. We had four groups with seven people and students teamed up with one teacher and one guide.

My group walked to a large field and decided that we would camp on that field. We put our bags on the ground and started to brainstorm about how to make our trip successful. Then our guide asked us to unpack everything in our rucksack so that she could check how well-organised and orderly our bags are and how well everyone is equipped. We had a short break time after unpacking and then repacking our rucksack and then we learnt about mapping skills and hiking skills. Leaning mapping skills wasn’t very difficult but it was hard to measure the proper distance and the time it took for us to travel certain distance. Later, we cooked our first meal on this trip and planned for the route, direction and time for the next day’s hiking. After that we hurried to sleep because we knew that the next day would be a challenging, arduous and tiring day due to hiking.

The next morning was very cold. It wasn’t freezing cold but because we slept in the tent and my partner and I forgot to open the air hole, all the exhaled water vapours from our mouth had condensed on the inner layer of the tent. We had to cook really fast to eat enough and wear as many clothes as possible to keep us warm. After eating breakfast, we rushed to pack everything back into the rucksack, and got ready to set off for the hiking. We started hiking at 9am from the starting point. Then using the map given, we were asked to solve every single problem we face by ourselves, for example problems like getting lost and deciding distance and direction. The guide was very determined. Whenever we tried to get some hints, she only gave us rhetorical questions so that we would ask ourselves instead. It was so frustrating that even with a guide whose familiar with Nanbeihu, we never got to get any help from her. We had to travel from spot 1 to spot 11. We had to hike up to the hill, then climb down again and then walk around the Nanbei Lake. Then we started hiking again and hiked for a LONG time. Unfortunately during the day, because we weren’t concentrating on the map and the compass, we got lost twice. First we climbed up a hill which was completely off the map and second, we were going into the wrong direction for nearly about two hours. But soon, we understood fully on mapping skills and we managed to get to the camping site again at about 7:20pm. We were the last group to goal into the camping site because we’d been lost for too long. The meal we ate after the hiking was absolutely amazing. Although all we ate was only rice, curry, canned food and vegetable, the food was so delicious! Maybe it was so good because we took a great effort to climb up the hills for almost 10 hours. While we were eating, we thought that hiking worth the time and efforts because in the end, we got to eat this yummy meal and enjoyed the time of cooperating and working in team.

On the last day of this trip, we had 10 spots to travel. The last day’s course was more about ‘climbing’ than ‘walking.’ But because our group had planned direction, we all felt really confident that we would be at the final point within the given time. But there was another risky episode happened on the last day. Our map got completely ripped. It had been very rainy, foggy and wet, and as a result, our map got ripped. Fortunately, we got all the routes planned the day before, if we weren’t prepared, I guess we must have been lost for another LONG time and wouldn’t be able to leave Nanbeihu at 2:30pm. We learnt that it is vital to keep our map safe because in real adventurous expedition, the map could cost a life. On the last day, we weren’t lost and we successfully arrived at the final point even before the predicted time. We all cheered when we realised that we had made it again. Although everyone was exhausted, no one felt bad because everyone was very excited that we had made a HUGE achievement throughout this trip. While we were hiking, we were saying that we would never sign up for another IA trip, but in the end, everyone changed their mind that we would definitely go to another trip to challenge ourselves. We had a great time competing against ourselves and feeling self-assured.