Adventure Week!

Since 2005 the American International School of Hong Kong has developed an Outdoor Education and Leadership Program that enables the whole high school to annually go off campus and take part in outdoor education and adventure, in community service, or in leadership programs in a variety of locations. Every October, the week before autumn break, regular high school classes are suspended and all students take part in this off-campus program. The Adventure Week program is designed to develop students holistically in a way not possible in the classroom or home setting. During the 2013 - 14 academic year students from the American International School of Hong Kong traveled to the following locations: Siem Reap, Cambodia; Borneo, Malaysia; Guangzhou, China; Fiji; Bali, Indonesia; North Island, New Zealand; and India. I challenged my twelfth grade students to write travel essays reflecting on their adventures and community service work in the various destinations they visited. I also challenged myself to write a travel essay about my experience as a teacher in Cambodia. This collection of essays is the result of my students' work. In these essays students reflect on the impact of poverty on children and families; on how little it takes to make a person happy when life is stripped down to its barest essentials; and on how good it feels to replace electronic friendships with real ones.