Freshy Quest Camp

A good subtitle for this post would be: hiking and camping with people who have never been and have no desire to be hiking and camping. Or even better: hiking and camping with people who have never been and have no desire to be hiking and camping and who are really hungry because there isn't enough food. As you can guess, it was fun times.

Freshy Quest Camp is an orientation event for all freshman and pretty similar to the senior quest camp I helped with earlier this year. Payap is lucky to have some cabins in the "mountains" near Chiang Mai. They are in the middle of a national forest and are a great place to get away from the bustle and pollution of the city. And so, once a year, Esther's department coordinates with the International College to put on a camp for all the incoming freshman. students are shuttled out to the base of the mountain and then everyone hikes up to the cabins, stopping along the way for games. It's supposed to be a time for them to get to know each other and to reflect a little bit about their recent transition into life as a student.

It's really an excellent idea, with one little hitch. Most of the students at Payap aren't what you might call the outdoorsy type. True, some of them come from rural backgrounds and are used to living without things many Americans would consider necessities, but for the most part it's a group that is more interested in shopping and playing video games than in spending a weekend without cell phone service or hot water. But that problem is a small one compared to the fact that most of these students would rather not walk anywhere, much less up a steep mountain trail. If you think I am exaggerating, here is an example. On saturday before we were about to depart a couple of students wanted to get something from the nearby 7'eleven. By "nearby," I mean it would take maybe two minutes to walk there. However these students chose to use the campus shuttle service, which they had to wait for and which takes longer anyways because it has to take a more indirect route. These were the kids we were going to spend the day hiking up steep mountain trails with.

Of course by mountain I really mean hill and while the trails do get pretty steep in a few places, they don't come anywhere close to the trails I tackled in New Zealand and would be considered quite easy by most people. Plus the hike isn't really that long, only about 4k, and there are plenty of stops along the way. But to hear the groans of our unhappy campers you would think we were forcing them to climb Mt. Everest. At least we'd had the good sense to tell them to bring appropriate shoes this time. At senior quest camp we had girls wearing heels and platform shoes.

However despite the whining saturday got off to a pretty good start. I think the students really enjoyed the games, which were led by someone from another department, and despite their grumbling I think they enjoyed being out in nature for a change. And so we arrived at the cabins, tired and hungry from a day outdoors. And that's when things began to, well, not run so smoothly.

It started with the food. We had planned on having food for about 20 people. Unfortunately we actually had about 25 with us. Usually this event is catered and there is a cook, but we were under budget constraints and so our team was responsible for it all. When it became apparent that we had underestimated the amount of food we would need (considerably), Esther, sarah and Mai rose to the occasion wonderfully by supplementing our spaghetti with some fried rice, bread and butter and pretty much whatever we could scrounge up. But there still was barely enough and while no one went hungry, nobody likes to be told there's a shortage of food when they're starving and I felt especially bad since this group wasn't all that keen on the whole experience in the first place.

From then on we never managed to rally the troops' morale. Our team had some cultural activities planned for the evening that we had transplanted from our intercultural workshop, but by this point nobody was all that motivated. They were nice kids, and they listened and to be fair there were a couple of activities that went pretty well, but by the time I took over the workshop at the end everyone was tired and really just wanted to relax. I could understand that, and I would've even considered calling my section off, but the bonfire wasn't lit yet and I didn't want to leave them to their own devices for too long. so I tried to present my section with enthusiasm, but I was as relieved as they were when everyone had finished their skits and we were able to go to the bonfire.

We were lucky to be able to have some extra bread brought up for the French toast in the morning, but we had a late start for the traditional hike to the top of the mountain. sunday morning is supposed to be more reflective, and we had some good things planned for this during stops along the hike, but everyone just wanted to go back home. They weren't too pleased when we told them we would be going to the summit first. I was amazed that they actually invested as much as they did in the activities, but overall you could tell that most of them really just wanted to be done with the whole thing. Not the attitude I was hoping for at the end of the camp.

Anyhow, it's a classic case of live and learn. We'll know better for next time what doesn't work. I learned a lot about how to plan this type of event. And I still had a great time getting out of the city, doing some hiking, enjoying some cooler weather, and looking out over a beautiful view of Chiang Mai.