A Strange Trip...

On Wednesday, all of EF's Beijing centers closed down and the entire staff was taken away to a team building retreat at a hot springs "resort." This was the strangest place I have ever visited. There were all of these weird Chinese art decorations everywhere. At night they were lit up and some of them even moved. They were scary; I saw one Chinese child run away screaming and in tears after his parents made him watch one of them.

I really can't describe them so here are some pictures:

What were our rooms like? Well, they were basically dorms. Some people also lived here. When trying to find my room I walked into the wrong one. Turns out it was someone's house. I got chased out by a little short Chinese lady. In the room there was a menu of massage services.

There were several hot springs pools around the place. One of them was a very beautiful outdoor type swimming pool. There was also a really nice indoor pool (which I never had the chance to visit.)

Here is the outdoor pool:

That above pool is quite beautiful. But nothing could have prepared me for the smaller pool:

There was a second children's pool with a statue of a boy peeing.

We had some interesting meals. The meals were served family style and consisted of a variety of meats and vegetables, fish with the head still on, that sort of thing.. I ate mostly rice. It appeared safest of all the food. While waiting on lunch to begin EF teacher Zach suggested we play Indian poker. You stick a card to your forehead and base your bet on what other people's cards are. Here are some pictures from the game and the meals:

In closing, here is a picture of a bird who was out strutting his stuff. He took time to pose for the camera: