Living like a monk means eating coleslaw in silence before sunrise?
Manalapan High School students make 'indescribable' journey to China
By Joshua Riley • FREEHOLD BUREAU • August 31, 2009

MANALAPAN — A Manalapan High School teacher had two days before spring break to find four student adventurers to take along on a trip to China.
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"Hi. You don't know me, and I don't know you, but can I take your kid to China?" was her rendition of the calls she made to parents.

And on Aug. 1, teacher Heather Sullivan and students Cory Bolotsky, Kim Gennaro, Caitlin Silk and Drew Regino, all rising seniors, were whisked away to Beijing.

Following their recent return, the students said they had still had difficulty describing the journey that took them to the Olympic Bird's Nest Stadium and Water Cube, hiking along the Great Wall and visiting the home of the warrior monks, the Shaolin Temple.

But Bolotsky gave it his best shot.

"(It was) an indescribable, unique, once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and every day was filled with infinite cultural paradigm shifts and remarkable experiences," he said.

The experiences were as daring as eating duck brains and as culturally eye-opening as visiting a Chinese home where design and customs are tied to feng shui beliefs.

Being chosen for the trip was a tremendous stroke of luck. Ten teachers choosing four students each were selected from schools across the country to pilot Discovery Student Adventures, run by the Discovery Communications' education division. The Discovery Channel is one of its products.

The trips sent students and teachers to Australia, South Africa and China free of charge to help promote the paid trips in the future.

Every minute of every day they spent in China was packed with learning experiences, the students said.

They visited the Urban Planning Center that contains models of cityscapes. Each building has symbolic meaning, they learned. One building is shaped like a dragon, and another, a microchip.

While in Beijing, they learned to cook Chinese dishes with a chef and visited the Forbidden City and campus of last summer's Olympic games. They camped out next to the Great Wall and hiked it for six hours the next day.

Before returning home, the group spent four days in the Shaolin Temple kung fu school and spent a day living like a monk, waking up before sunrise to eat a silent, coleslaw-like breakfast.

Along the way, adventurers blogged and used Twitter to log their experiences. The writings are still available on http://dsachina.blogspot.com, and more information about the pilot trips and organization is available at http://discoverystudentadventures.com.
I didn't chase down the blogs.