This past Sat­ur­day, the for­eign teach­ers set off for Mr. Dai’s home­town, Wang­cun (a 2 hour drive from Jishou). We were told that we would spend the day hik­ing, but details of the trip were unclear. It was only while we were eat­ing lunch that Mr. Dai men­tioned the hike would be “a lit­tle bit dan­ger­ous” and would involve water­falls and “metal chains…”

At that point, every­one who was think­ing of bring­ing a cam­era on the hike (myself included) vis­i­bly cringed. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to han­dle grap­pling metal chains (??) while ensur­ing that my beloved Canon came out unscathed. Every­one was given the oppor­tu­nity to leave all valu­ables behind — but, once at the hotel, Tony con­vinced me that I would cer­tainly regret leav­ing my cam­era, and that I should def­i­nitely bring it. A tad skep­ti­cal, I gave in, pray­ing that my pre­cious DSLR would not meet an untimely death.

The nerves really started to kick in when we arrived at the hike’s start­ing point; Mr. Dai had not been kid­ding about the metal chains, although per­haps “metal ropes” is a more apt descrip­tion. We saw a pro­mo­tional poster of peo­ple hold­ing onto the ropes, which had been fixed into the rocks, as they scaled the moun­tain­side on what appeared to be steel platforms. To my hor­ror, these steel plat­forms appeared to be sus­pended sev­eral meters above a river/body of water. Key word here: sus­pended. I hap­pen to be ter­ri­fied of heights. I think Cameron must have seen my face when I saw the pro­mo­tional poster, for he mur­mured some­thing about there being no pres­sure to go through with the hike. I will admit that for a split sec­ond I was rather tempted to find a way out; but, as with sev­eral things that I have encoun­tered on this trip, deep down I knew that I had to pull a Nike and “just do it.”

Despite my ini­tial qualms, the hike turned out to be one of the most amaz­ing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. It was 2 hours long, and felt just like an adven­ture theme park ride. Grasp­ing onto the ropes was a lot of fun, espe­cially because — my fear of heights aside - I enjoy climb­ing. The scenery was breath­tak­ing; we slid along mossy rock walls, over and under water­falls, all the while look­ing down at green-blue water. The real chal­lenge came when we had to first climb up a lad­der, then scale the wall of an open cave. I hap­pened to be the first of the SoS-ers to tackle this por­tion of the hike. My heart pound­ing, my palms sweaty, “oh-my-God”-ing with Jes­sica say­ing “You can do it!” right behind me, I some­how made my way up the lad­der and slowly clam­bered along the cave wall with­out dis­rupt­ing the peace of the rock-pool far below. After that stretch was over, I felt the biggest adren­a­line rush I’ve felt in a long time — my hands were shak­ing, and I was over­whelmed with an immense feel­ing of accomplishment.

I real­ize that I feel the same adren­a­line rush each time I step into the class­room and say, “Good morn­ing everyone!” We are now in the third week of class, and I have seen so many improve­ments in the stu­dents’ home­work assign­ments, par­tic­i­pa­tion, and over­all atti­tude towards learn­ing Eng­lish. The more quiet stu­dents seem to have blos­somed, and the other Uni­corn teach­ers and I have noticed that they are def­i­nitely open­ing up. It’s hard to believe that we have a mere 10 days of teach­ing left — I feel as if we’ve only just begun to scratch the sur­face of what these stu­dents are capa­ble of.

I have pushed myself to do things I’d never dreamed of doing before com­ing to China, and have found myself lov­ing things that may have fright­ened or dis­gusted me a month or so ago. I know that, just as I over­came my fear of heights, our stu­dents are con­stantly push­ing them­selves to improve their Eng­lish, over­com­ing dif­fi­cul­ties that I am learn­ing about day by day. I hope that my stu­dents will soon feel the same rush, the same feel­ing of accom­plish­ment that I expe­ri­enced on my Wang­cun hike.

Most impor­tantly, I hope that they enjoy the view from the top.