A camp

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So for the last two day me and all the people from my work had to go on a work retreat. Five minutes after teaching my last class of the day we were shoved onto two buses and hurtled into the chinese countryside. This was my first real taste of the what rural china is capable of. Rolling fields as far as you can see dotted with houses and farms. In the distance you see large processing buildings but all in all it is peacful and quiet.

We got off the bus to fireworks exploding all around us and people screamiing and music blaring. The "camp"were we were staying turned out to be a "motel 8"style building that surrounded a courtyard with forest and fields stretching on out behind it. There was drinking, a talent show, dancing and a hell of alot more drinking. Me and a buddy named kieran and a couple other dudes decided that we were ganna drink the whole night through because the booze was free. At some point i was on stage with a guitar, then suddenly found myself on a roof with an oversized soccerball and about 10 other people. Things were going smoothly untill me and some guys decided to walk off into the countryside and explore rural china. We stepped into the woods and started to walk. Within fifteen minutes we had stumbled into a grave yard somewhere in the middle of a massive forest. In our loaded state we decided not to bother the dead and continued on till we hit a wall of corn. We plunged in. Surprising the spiders in northern china are not much different then the ones we have at home except for the fact that they are about 5 times bigger. I am yet to see one that is less then a thumb width wide and most are a hell of alot bigger then that. We ran outa the field, helped each other brush off our little friends and found ourselves in the edge of the forest with the trees starting to thin out and sunrise starting to show. As we walked toward the light we started to be able to hear music so we followed it. It led us to a cliff, over looking a small farming community. We sat and watched the sunrise as the music softly played from somewhere in the town below us. As the scene brightend it looked like a painting. I think all of us just sat in awe of what we had found untill we realized that by now we could possibly be missed and decided to try to make our way back. It took a long time but when we did we looked like huge pieces of shit with shit eating grins plastered on our faces. I dont think we stopped drinking the whole time. As we stumbled into camp we noticed people were gathering in the courtyard. We tried to straighten up and look as sober as possible as we tried to sneak past the throng and find our beds. Asian wemon noticed us, grabbed us and put pink shirts on us and forced us into lines. A man began to yell at us and then we realized where we were...it was a bootcamp to build work relations. With the help of a translator the drill sargent explained that the activities today would test us mentaly and physicaly, which, in our drunken state, was not something any of us was looking forward too. We were split into four teams and asked to slecet a leader. I however did not understand the question and thought we were going to vote for a leader, i raised my hand to cast my vote and was promptly selected as the leader. The first hour was a blur of marching and silly games as an asian man yelled at me. I think i vommited at one point but soon was leading our team to victory with a cigarette in mouth and bottle of water in hand. It lasted about 5 hours.


We arrived home that eaving and i slept for 14 hours.

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