Homeschooling family on a 13-km hike
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Extra-curricular Activities on 5 Jan 2011.
Homeschooling gives a family so much flexibility to accomplish things that really matter. While new homeschooling parents are understandably anxious about categories of work and play and ‘schooling’, veterans have long learned that one can sometimes do all that in a happy overlapping mess of activities. Now try imagining all this with 6 children in tow. I think that’s what you call real-life education in the real world!
Adrian and Jessy Yeong are parents of 6 lovely children. Mom Jessy will tell you it’s not easy juggling everyone’s needs, but that has not stopped the family from making the most of their homeschooling adventure. In the closing days of the old year, the Yeongs travelled up north, and among other things, hiked up Maxwell Hill. In the process, they did not only bond more deeply with one another, they built wonderful memories that will last a lifetime. Here’s their report written by Jessy that was first posted on her Facebook page.
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OUR FAMILY’S MAXWELL HILL CHALLENGE
By Jessy Phuah
Today, we had a family outing, a trip to Taiping to makan and jalan-jalan. We took on a family challenge: we are going to walk/ trek up Maxwell Hill covering a distance approximately 13 kilometers.
Walking on the road was pretty boring except for a few small waterfalls along the way, some wild flowers to look at, pink, yellow, white and purple, an army of giant ants… listening to horns of the oncoming jeeps blazing as they were breezing through. Our little ones waving to them caught their attention as they look in amazement with their thumbs up. We walked and walked. We walked past the station where some locals stopped and rested at the end-point of their walk up. Some were having tea there, they starred at us and cheered us on. I guess that’s about 2 – 3 km which took up about 30 minutes of our walk.
So different from our normal jungle trek, here we had stretches of road and bends, and it goes round and round winding itself all the way up, it not mistaken a total of 92 bends. Ah, suddenly we chanced upon a jungle trek and decided to climb. We had good progress, we ended up at another road and had noticed that we had fast-forward 10 bends and appeared at bend no 22.
We walked till we reached the Tea Garden (8km)…. finally for some coffee and tea and cake and scones whatever they may offer as we were tired after the long walk, only to be disappointed. They have nothing to offer, not even the toilet to our dismay, they were closed for renovation. We sat down at the stairway for 10 minutes, I had nothing much to offer them, only a few slices of bread so kids munched on whatever we had, a few slices of bread and a drink of water. We had to go on and so we walked on.
At this point, my 3 year old Joshua was getting tired so on and off I carried him. Andre helped too. After walking about a kilometer away, it started to drizzle. We weren’t prepared and were caught in the rain. At this point, 3 jeeps zoomed past us, we tried to hitch a ride but they had no passenger space to oblige us. Not desiring to be drenched, we prayed and asked God to hold back the rain and bring it to a stop. It still drizzle on and since there weren’t much shelter we decided to walk in hope that we might reach the peak soon enough.
Adrian walked fast and soon disappeared out of sight. Fit as he is, he backpacked little Joseph and wanted to make sure his little one won’t get wet, God is good, though it drizzled about 20 minutes we weren’t really wet at all, and the rain eventually stopped. Our spirits were lifted up, we were glad and thanked God, we continued our ascent to the submit.
The sweet aroma of coffee drifted by and tingled our noses, the concrete signpost ahead stated 1 kilometer to Bukit Larut, I was excited and told the kids we were fast approaching our destination. The signboard misled us – it took us longer than a kilometer before we could reach the actual submit, but we did it! Ah … My first stop, the toilet finally.
The kids had some chocolate coated cake and water. After a while, we were glad we had bought tickets earlier for the jeep ride down. Adrian commented that since we could do a 13 kilometer, we might be able to scale up Mount Kinabalu, from the mid-point to the submit which is 17 kilometers up. Will we do it ? Well, I don’t know, as for now, I am going to sleep…good night!
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