Project Week is finally OVER!!!

Even though we just started the PW process just a couple of months ago, it feels like yesterday when we just started and now we are DONE.

PW is probably one of the most interesting experiences I have EVER had. This was my first time travelling without any adult supervision (I am SO glad that I didn’t lose my passport), and that too it was to a place that neither I nor my parents have ever been to. (for context we went to Yangshuo in China)

A lot of things happened during PW so I am going to go through this piece by piece.

First up, rock climbing.

The majority of our trip was spent on rock climbing, we were in China for a week, 2 of those days were spent travelling, and 2 of the remaining 3 days was spent rock climbing. On the surface this seems fine, but the thing is that I am absolutely HORRIFIED by heights, I cannot stand being in high places particularly if the “ground level” is also really high up (the foot of the rock climbing wall – they were the sides of mountains by the way – were really, REALLY high up). Basically, my brain never got a break from the horror that is heights. It didn’t matter whether I was climbing or not, I was constantly in fear because of the location of the rock climbing wall. So I was mentally and emotionally very drained to say the least. BUT I am proud that I got through it, I ultimately did make to the top of 3 lines, which is honestly 3 more than what I expected, especially since I would get dizzy from being too high up for too long. So now, while I probably might not go outdoor rock climbing for a while, I do feel less scared of the thought of going up a wall, and I do feel an improvement in my rock climbing skills. Although to be fair, I didn’t have any skills to begin with, but on the second day, I was able to climb the walls (at least the easy parts) slightly faster than the first day. And even when I felt like giving up, my group mates would encourage me from the ground and make me climb just a little higher and go slightly further out of my comfort zone. If it weren’t for their encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have even reached the top of even one line, so there’s that I guess. The fact that I even managed to climb on a day when reaching the foot of the wall was a climb in of itself, makes me happy as I would never have expected myself to push myself to such levels. I am genuinely a “water” person, I have always preferred water sports, but trying a land sport that revolved around one of my biggest fears was interesting and not nearly as bad as I thought.

Next up is fan painting. As mentioned earlier, we spent 5 days in China, 2 were for travelling, 2 were for rock climbing. The remaining day was spent on fan painting and caving. First I’m going to talk about fan painting. I am not a creative person. I cannot paint to save my life, I cannot draw to save my life. But fan painting made me to overcome my mindblock that I cannot paint anything. Fan painting has shown me that I can paint a decent leafless bamboo forest (I never really got the hang of the leaves). It has shown me that I have a little more patience than I give myself credit for (at the start I thought that I would give up and ultimately paint the entire fan black), so when I ended with a fan with some questionable “art” on it, I was extremely surprised that I didn’t entirely give up. But more importantly it showed me the importance teamwork. Since we were in China, and we were learning fan painting in a village, the teacher couldn’t speak a word of English. This meant that Sophie and I (although majority of the time it was Sophie) were busy translating the two languages so that the remaining 2 members of our group would be able to understand what was going on and fully take part in the different activities as well. This was particularly prominent with the fan painting, as our activity provider could speak proper English and he was there for both the rock climbing and the caving (although on the second day of rock climbing there was a second instructor who could barely speak English). But translation practice aside, in a country where the majority of the population can’t speak English, it is important to stick together and work together so as to ensure that everyone is safe, understands what is going on and has fun.

Next up was caving. That was probably the highlight of my trip since I love dark areas, water and bats. THERE WERE SO MANY BATS IT WAS SO COOL! But this was also interesting as in the cave, we all have to stick together since the activity provider was the only one who knew where we were going, and since we all walk at different speeds, we would have to stick together and ensure that no one was lost or forgotten. This logic also applied while walking around crowded places like West Street (which is where we generally got dinner). But during caving I realised something, the cave is made of limestone. And limestone is relatively important in different industries. Apparently people used to mine limestone from the caves, and that permanently destroyed some parts of the cave. Basically, what I am getting to is that often with people exploration and development, we unintentionally destroy some beautiful parts of nature and future generations may never get to see it. These wonderful things that we get to see will be destroyed beyond recognition by the next generation and it’ll become a myth, a story that becomes subject of speculation because these miracles of nature no longer exist. And this applies to so many more things, habitat destruction, extinction of animals due to global warming, acid rain corroding ancient buildings  historical monuments. The sudden development of technology within the past century has resulted in effects that environment cannot handle, and these issues is something that I feel should be dealt with immediately as these issues affect every single person on the face of the earth. And if something is not done about it soon, then all creatures, humans included, will go extinct. Sudden epiphany otherwise, caving was loads of fun, it is not often that I get to surround myself in such an abyss-like darkness for long periods of time.

Now for some more general reflections. I feel that on this trip it was important to keep family, ISOS and our supervisor updated on our whereabouts. On the first day of activities, we didn’t realise that we would not have any service on the mountains, so we didn’t get a chance to update ISOS on our locations. After we got back to an area where we had cell service, we learnt that ISOS had been trying to contact us, but to no avail. This probably would have created a bit of panic as we were unreachable for an entire day, but we made sure to not let that happen on the rest of the days, and kept updating ISOS on our locations as regularly as we could. I think we, as a group, became closer and more comfortable with each other by the end of the trip, and we also worked more cohesively towards the end and learnt more about each other during the process. Also something that I feel like is a little important to mention, as media coordinator I have to make a podcast (which I haven’t done yet), but will be coming up which I suspect will be an interesting and definitely not frustrating (note the sarcasm) project.

Basically, project week is over, and it is probably one of the best experiences I have ever had.