On the day of May 4th, 9th-grade SHSID students embarked on a journey to Changxing Island to partake in an outdoor survival training course. Students were both curious and excited about the unexpected differences in this two-day curriculum. After the enthusiastic icebreaker activities, all students were randomly grouped for training.

Teambuilding

To make the randomly assigned team more cohesive, the students carried out a series of colorful team-building activities, such as the imaginative "Rope Shape", the exciting "Team Crossing Ladders", and the brainstorming "Traffic Jam"... In the laughter and cheers, the students also gradually mastered the skills of games and realized the importance of teamwork.

Fire Making & Shelter Building

How does one start a fire without lighters or matches? In this activity, the coaches introduced several methods to start a fire, such as twisting a pole against a piece of curved wood to create enough friction to start a fire and using the traditional flint-and-steel method to burn leaves and branches, to name a few. During the process of making their own fires, the students went through hope and despair over and over again until they finally lit up the flame.

In the activity of shelter building, students were required to use materials to build a temporary shelter and test it through simulated extreme weather to see if it was sturdy enough. The shelter was rebuilt again and again until it passed all inspection tests for safety.

Hiking & Navigation

In the field of navigation, students learned how to use a compass to determine direction. Using a compass to determine the cardinal directions is the most basic and important skill to have in the wild, so it is vital that students are capable of discerning their location no matter where they are. While teaching, the coaches also combined lessons with many competitive games so that students could acquire knowledge at the same time whilst also having fun.

Then the students carried on with the hiking activities including on both bumpy roads and smooth roads. Although the students were sweating under the hot sun, no one ever said to give up, as all were united to complete the hike together.

Raft Building

Raft building was one of the most anticipated activities of the survival training course. It was a challenging competition with a simple procedural objective — to build a raft with the available resources and paddle it to the white buoy near the middle of the lake without tipping over. Two groups of around ten students competed against each other, with only forty minutes to design and build the rafts. The materials offered were rope, five bamboo sticks, and four tires. Numerous innovative designs were implemented, such as triangular rafts, or tightly parallel tires, while the coaches taught them how to tie tight knots to keep the raft together. But this was only the first part of the competition—ultimately, the two teams had to send out four people each to board the raft and finish the mission objective. As an activity that both developed teamwork and the survival skill of raft building, it was both fun and practical.

Cooking and Campsite Setup

Survival training was undeniably exhausting, and a nice meal was indeed necessary to re-power everyone. Although entertaining, cooking posed a challenge for many students. With the prepared tools and ingredients, all the students carefully lit the stoves and cooked their meals. The burning oil and fire drove away many students, yet the appealing odor drew them back in.

Due to the weather, students were brought to an indoor basketball gym to build their tents. Through a lively demonstration made by the coaches, the students all learned all the procedures of building a tent. By making their own tents stand, every student created a cozy shelter that could be a place of rest after a long day of activities.

Leave no trace activity

In order to guide people to protect nature and minimize the impact on the natural environment when performing outdoor activities, the seven principles of "Leave No Trace" came into being. As the final activity of this training, the students listened carefully to the coaches' explanations on the principles and used self-directed short plays to interpret their understanding of the relevant principles and their determination to protect nature.

During the two-day training sessions, there was both heavy rains as well as sunshine, and although the weather changed greatly, the students bravely responded to various challenges and difficulties with optimistic attitudes and united actions, enjoying the beauty of nature. SHSIDers, dream big and fly high!

(Written by 9(10) Jessica Huang, 9(13) Gabrielle Dai, 9(9) Christina Zhang, 9(12) Angela Wu, 9 (5) Peiying Kam, 9(1) Letitia Lai, 9(2) Eric Xiao   Pictures by Grade 9 teachers   Edited by Roy Kouchakgi  Supervised by Mengli Wang   Reviewed by Qian Zuo)