As a 7th grader, Emersyn has a few classes she fills with electives of her choice. She must do music (band, strings or choir) and an art/drama one semester which leaves one semester for a class of anything she desires. She is in the band playing the saxophone which is both semesters. Emersyn chose Awesome Acting for her drama to take place the second semester. For her “free choice” she picked Mr. Umphenour’s leadership class. Mr. Umphenour leads the dive trip Emersyn and Jim did in the summer to Thailand. This is a class of learning to be a leader in emergency situations. Emersyn loved the class proving she has her Dad’s quick responses to any situation.

The final activity of the class was a weekend exercise at Concordia. The group will be carrying all their gear as if they were out in the “real mountains”. Jim and Emersyn did a little REI shopping over the holidays for a sleeping bag and camping pad. I had a backpack from Decathlon that was the right size for her. Jim was still in the USA which left Emersyn and I to pack her backpack. We took as little as possible, but enough to keep her warm – we hoped! By the time we stuffed the sleeping bag in the pack, there wasn’t much room. For food for the weekend, Emersyn had camping freeze dried food from REI to cook over a fire. I had sent her with chicken, nuts and protein bars for a back-up (good idea, Mom).

The activity ran from Friday night at 9pm to Sunday morning at 10am. The MS Activity Night was this Friday night, therefore, the start time was moved back to 9pm. She looked refreshed and pretty for activity night.

The group would be sleeping outside the first night on the roof of the middle school. It is winter in Shanghai which means cold and wet. Night time temperatures have been -2c/27f all week with rain. The day time temperatures haven’t been much warmer as there has been very little sunshine in Shanghai. I kept thinking she is going freeze her “tush off”. Friday rolled around and the weather warmed up. When I checked the weather at 9pm, the temperature was 8c/45f – the warmest it has been since we arrived back – warmer than the days! The second night was planned for an inside sleep in the elementary school gym, which was good because it did rain hard Saturday night.

The report back from Emersyn was “two thumbs up”. Here is the detail of the trip from Emersyn. The weekend was about team building exercises. The students had to “climb a mountain, cross a snow field, make a signal tower for a helicopter, climbing a glacier and climbing across a frozen piece of land”. To “climb a mountain”, the students climbed 61 flights in the ES school. The ES school has 4 floors, therefore, coming down did not count. The ES school stairs were used because there are two sets of stairs at each end of the school. The HS has 6 floors, but only one set of stairs. The students climbed the 61 flights with their packs on and roped together for mountain climbing – until 2am. At one point in the exercise, they had to carry an “injured” person. There were five people on Emersyn’s team. At 2am, they pulled out their sleeping bags to sleep outside on the roof. Emersyn said she was warm sleeping in her new bag which is rated to 0f. We had packed her clothes for layers and she was fine.

To “crossed the snow field”, they used group skis to trudge around the field of the school 25 times. Emersyn’s group of four divied up into two groups of two. They used four person skis, but only had two people per ski. There were two other teams of five on a 5-person ski. Emersyn and her partner, Soe Jeong, went around the field ten times! Her team mates, Max and Jason, went around the field nine times. The other two teams of five only went around the field three times each. Adding up the total laps around the field, the combined groups did a total of twenty-five laps – just enough to “cross the snow field”.

Next, Emersyn’s group plus two other groups had to “climber a glacier.” The groups used the school’s rock climbing wall. Three people had to make it to the top for the group to pass. For all the students particiating, seven people “climbed the glacier”, including Emersyn. Emersyn really enjoyed climbing the rock wall, but said she enjoys climbing natural rock formations more like we do in Yangshou at Thanksgiving. After the group “climbed over the glacier”, they had to cross over a “frozen piece of land” which was bouldering from point A to point B. Again, this took place at Concordia’s rock climbing wall. One person, in a group of three, would start off and boulder until they fell off. When the first person fell off, the second person of their group took their place. The same process happened for the third person. If by the third person no one made it across, another group would take their place. They had to have three groups cross the “frozen piece of land” to pass this test. In the end, three groups passed the “frozen piece of land” with Emersyn’s group being one of them.

The ultimate test for everyone on the leadership weekend was building a signal tower as one whole group. It was 5pm and they had until 7:30pm to build a signal tower because the “helicopter” couldn’t reach them past 7:30pm. The hard part of this test was it had to be six feet tall, be made out of paperclips and straws and hold a laser for five minutes. In the beginning, no one could agree on what or how to build the tower. Everyone had their own idea they thought was flawless. After a couple minutes of arguing, the group gathered in a big circle. They squabbled for about three more minutes until suddenly they broke away as they had agreed on an idea. They divided into three groups, one group to make stabilizers, one group to build the boxes that would make up the structure and one group to put everything together. Emersyn wasn’t assigned to a group, instead she was a supervisor. She went around from group to group and asked how everyone was doing. She kept everyone on task and helped when there was a problem. There were a couple other supervisors, but they were all in the eighth grade. Emersyn was the only seventh grader who was a supervisor. About 45 minutes from their deadline they had a major problem – they needed to move the structure to the middle of the gym. Currently, it was in the corner of the gym. Everybody carefully picked up the structure and moved it to the middle onto a yoga mat hoping it would give them another centimeter of height. Quickly, they re-build the tower, but encountered another problem – the tower was leaning to the left too much. They devised a plan to hang groups of straws bundled together on the side of the tower. When they thought it was ready, they had Mr. Umphenour come over and place the laser on the tower. It held for two minutes before falling. Everyone rushed to save the tower before it totally collapsed. They managed to save the tower before too much damage had been done. Quickly, they assigned a group to make weights for the tower as the cause of the fall was from the tower leaning too far to the left. Seventeen minutes from the deadline, Mr. Umphenour came over again to see if the signal tower would hold the laser for 5 minutes. There was one person on the mat, which to Emersyn was incredibly stupid, considering one accidental move and the whole tower would move and fall. For the five minutes of wait, everyone held their breath. No one talked, but if they did, they we’re hushed by the majority of the group. No one moved except for one girl who danced in the corner from anticipation. Finally, the five minutes were up and the tower had passed it’s first test! The next test was to see if it was taller than Mr. Umphenour. It was by an inch. Everyone was so happy! If they had failed this test, they would have had to carry two people on stretchers up the 61 flights of stairs, “the mountain”, they climbed to reach their victims to get back to “town”. Instead, the students only had to carry one person and Rufus, the dummy, up five flights of stairs each.

Lara was the victim that would be carried up and down by the two teams. There were only two teams for this exercise, a red team and a blue team. The plan was simple, they would carry Lara up the stairs, then across the fourth floor hallway and hand Lara off to the other team to take her down. They carefully went up and down without a complaint. One time they had to stop because they we’re taking her down head first which could have caused her to go into “shock”. After they handed off their victim, Lara, they would retreat to their side of the floor, lie down and almost fall asleep. Everyone was tire though it was only 10:30pm. Everyone did their five flights without a complaint, whine or whimper. Everyone understood their position and task and completed it without words. After Lara’s turn was finished, they used the dummy, Rufus. Even though Rufus was the other victim he was handled with much less care, considering he wasn’t alive and it was 11:30pm. Finally the students finished.

The teams headed back downstairs for their final demonstration. The students were suppose to use Rufus as a victim who had a heart attack. The device did everything a regular device would do except actually shocking the person. The only problem was the batteries were corroded. Smiling inside everyone set up their sleeping bags and fell asleep. The next morning people who wanted to make fire would go up to the roof to make fire. Emersyn had gathered kindled from the garden. The palm trees provided the best kindle. Mr. Nie hand sawed some wood planks for Emersyn as we have no idea where to get wood here in Shanghai. They had two problems: a) the door was locked to the roof top of the middle school building, b) it was rained and no one had any dry wood as it was left on the roof overnight. With that set back, they all ate cold meals. Emersyn had nothing left as she was preparing to make fire. She asked her friends who had food and they gladly shared. then, it was time for the de-breifing. They gathered around and shared their thoughts on the trip. In another hour, it was time to go home. Emersyn was exhausted on Sunday, but loved it.

Emersyn is choosing to do the optional “real world” trip to the mountains in Kunming in March. The Concordia International School Hanoi (CISH) will join Concordia International School Shanghai (CISS) on this trip. They will have to navigate with compasses (not GPS) to three different camp sites. The teachers are there to keep the students safe, but not help. If they can’t find camp, they won’t have tents for the night or food. It should be a great experience. I am pleased that Emersyn takes advantages of these learning opportunities.