Yue Liang

The EF Kids and Teens schools fall outing started out early. I met up with some other friends from the neighborhood to fight our way through morning rush hour subway time. Going out anywhere here in Beijing in the early morning makes me appreciate having the five minute walk to work that I have here. Laura and Claire bought us all coffee and egg mcmuffins so we were pretty content as we packed in the subway trains like cattle!

We reached the meeting spot to take charter buses to the resort. It was one gigantic sea of bright pink Roddy shirts! They passed out breakfast sacks full of just dried meat products. I happily gave mine away! The bus ride was only about an hour. Each school was given a song that they had to practice and perform in the evening. My school was given a Chinese song about someones love for their romantic partner being as big as the moon. I offered to play the part as the moon in order to not butcher the Chinese so much.

We arrived at the resort and were lead to a car park area where we were going to play a few games. It took forever for the events to get set up so I had a chance to mingle with the teachers from other schools. They eventually had us group back into our schools to begin the events. The first event had ten participants. Five had to run through an obstacle course, drink a can of coke as fast as possible and then carry a team mate to end of the course. We came in second. I didn't participate in that one.

The next event was called "the tractor" where ten people were asked to stand inside of two folded banners that were pinned together and walk across the car park. The competition ended quickly when the first team ripped the two banners apart!

The third and final event was writing the first 14 numbers in Chinese characters faster than the other teams. Actually, everyone was most excited about that event and it was fun to watch. We each received a prize for "participating." I got a chicken puppet that I have donated to our limited toy bin. My friend Stephanie oddly grabbed a University of Oregon Duck mascot hat. It was clearly my mascot and had Oregon scrawled across the brim. Funny, huh?

We had a great lunch inside the main dining room of the resort. It was a huge lunch, and even with what I thought was the most endless supply of meat dishes, I still got full from all the vegetarian offerings.

We were then asked to check into our rooms. Marie and I were room buddies. We grabbed our bags off the bus and found our room. Most of the other rooms on the floor had unmade beds, but luckily, our room had been cleaned earlier. Ryan and James were in the room next door to us. As Marie and I were getting settled in we heard Ryan yelp and there was a huge hiss of water. We ran out to the hallway were Miles and James were laughing hysterically at Ryan, with a crazy look on his face, as small flood was flowing from their bathroom. Ryan had accidentally kicked and burst some sort of pipe. Marie told the group of maids on our floor what had happened, but they were being pretty chill about it all. I got a blockade of towels going as the boys continued to laugh and tease Ryan. Eventually, a handy man appeared and waded through the water and turned the water off, called it good, and left. The water had already began to escape into the bedroom part of their room and into the hallway. Ryan tried to ask for a new room but the maids told him too bad and that someone would eventually come to clean it up.

Miles determined that it was time to go, so we bounced out of the flood gates to find some fun. We eventually made our way to a bowling alley and and a billiard room. I spent some time practicing my Chinese for the song. We practiced as a big group.

We had another meal full of meat... not as much good vegetarian dishes this time. Everyone was asked to move to the the KTV room where we watched each others' performances. Laura was the MC and they had here try to get people to get up and dance to the weird German techno music between each of the performances. We couldn't let our boss down and we definitely were the only people dancing through most of our musical interludes.

Our song went much better then we thought it would. I was able to put my arms up to be the moon at the correct time. I was nervous with such a big responsibility!

After dinner, about three quarters of the group left to go spend the night back in Beijing. My school had the largest population of teachers and customer relations staff left. Marie, a few other teachers from another school, and myself found two full crates of beer hanging out in our KTV room. We got permission to take it, but seriously, we were acting like kids at Christmas. We went through the complex giving out beer. Eventually, we made it to the bowling alley were they let us drink beer and bowl at the same time.

We eventually tired of bowling and went back to our hotel building. I was able to count about twenty stars outside! It was almost magical. The boys were grateful to come back to a drier room. We found most of our customer relation staff members playing the card game Murder at the end of the hall. We brought our crates of beer and crashed their party.

Miles gleefully went around knocking on our doors at 8:30 to make sure we were all awake and excited to tell us that we were getting a free breakfast, too! Breakfast wasn't too promising for a non meat eater! We made it right on time for the buses.

I just had enough time to subway it back to the neighborhood, buy some cold vegetable noodles for lunch and shower before getting back to work. Everyone was walking around like tired zombies so it was pretty fun.