Day 407 Geocaching on the Green

My friend and fellow colleague, Eric, proposed a new club at
BNDS called the Beijing Explorer's Club.  Many of our kids are
from other provinces, and even those who live in BJ know
surprisingly very little about their hometown.  Eric is a Human
Geography teacher, and a fellow explorer like myself.  When I
heard of his idea to begin a club for students, I promptly invited
myself along as I love nothing more than educational adventures!

His students have been learning about
cartography, and my students have been
learning about personality development
to include the sociocultural paradigm of
human behavior. Those two ideas merged
into a field trip of geocaching on the
Olympic Green in Beijing :)
I don't know how exactly, but I'm going with it!

It was an absolutely gorgeous blue sky, clean air, fall afternoon
to go exploring at the Olympic Green, home to the 2008 Olympics.

We popped up from the subway after our trek across
town,to try and locate our first geocache.  The
day was full of promise and a plethora of
geocaches just waiting to be discovered.
We were all smiles, initially. Even "the grass
is smiling at you; please detour."  Oh, Chinglish :)

Jim looked like he was pulling a sneak attack on
a hidden geocahe- except he was no where close.

The above screen shot is all the geocaches
hidden on the Olympic Green.  If you are
unfamiliar with geocaching, it is like
treasure hunting, and there are over 2.7
million of them hidden world wide.  I have
been geocaching for years, but NEVER have I
got skunked like I did with my Chinese babies.
Geeez.....see the one smiley face?
That is the ONLY ONE we found all. dang. day.

Eric gave it the ol' college try....but sadly, no deal.

In spite of our lack of success, we had a great
time. It really was the perfect day to
be out and about.  Above you can see the
'Bird's Nest'- aka the National Stadium. 

I happened to find a chipmunk :)

We stumbled upon a waterfall in our quest, too.
I didn't put my head in; I was already working
on a sore throat and head cold, as I had only
been back in the 'jing for three days.
 I was still severely jet lagged (insert sleepy face).

We still were all smiles, even though we nearly struck out!

Late in the afternoon, we finally had success!  We logged this
photo of the location on the website.  If you want to go
treasure hunting in your hometown, or in your travels,
I promise you, it really is fun :) Click Here to Geocache

Look at this happy face with the hidden logbook!

Even though I was the one to actually find it,
everybody in the group had to sign the log- it was
a moral victory after all those hours of searching!

This was a microcache, but sometimes there
really are hidden treasures waiting to be discovered :)

It still a great afternoon of warm sunshine,
exercise, lots of laughs, and time well spent
getting to know my Chinese babies outside
of the classroom and the regular school day.
Artemis and Lisa are two sweethearts <3

Next time, I'm going on a reconnaissance mission first!

Time to soak my aching feet.

G'nite, y'all!