Sunday, May 16, 2010

My May Camping Trip Day 1

Yesterday was the start of a soon to be amazing weekend that I will have. In this weekend, I learned about packing well and to find out the weather because I had suffered a lot as well. When we got to the designated campsite, we had to set-up shelter and our tents. While setting up the shelters, I had the opportunity of climbing a table to get on a tree. First of all, we needed to tie ropes on the trees to put up the tarp in case rain or any sorts of precipitation fell on our food. So, we had to move the tables so it was lying along the tree so I could get up and tie ropes around the tree. The feeling of being high above the ground was just incredible. In the afternoon it was all learning DEA stuff but as it got darker, the fun games began. The first game we played was to jump around rocks. Although it sounds simple, in reality it is really really hard. The instructions were: to pick up an object: rock, wood, etc and to stand on it in a straight line of at least 10-20ish people like 1 meter apart. In our case we had 20 people. We were not allowed to step on the ground because it was supposedly hot lava and we had to move the people from the back of the line to the front. This was not challenging because it is not hard to jump on rocks. However our counsellor made it even more challenging by having some of us blindfolded. This increased the level of difficulty as a number of us including me was blindfolded. By the way, we only had 20 chances of falling before we had to do push-ups as punishment after that. However we had accomplished these two rigorous trials within 10 falls. After that, we had to try and say a greek alphabet within 5 seconds. This seemed impossible, imagine trying to say the english alphabet in 5 seconds. However we had accomplished it in 10 tries and succeeded beyond expectations with a time of 4.0 seconds. Can you believe it? The 24 words of the greek alphabet in 4.0 seconds including my word: upsilon. Can you do that? I DONT THINK SO!!! The next insane game was to try and fit all 20 of us on a piece of cardboard box. You know how you flatten the cardboard box so its flat, we had to fit 20 of us on it. In my mind, I knew it was impossible because I had done the exact same game in another camp known as the residential project. We had tried everything: piggy backing, having us hold hands and fall backwards as a circle, etc. This time, we had a log to sit on and we used it as best as we could. We had 3 people sit on a log and have their feet on the cardboard. Then we had more people sit on the 3 people that were on the log. In total we had 4 layers of people which was like 12 people sitting. I was one of them at the bottom and I had 3 other people sitting on me. MY LEGS WERE DYING Because I was losing all blood flow. I had hoped for having girls sit on me because they were lighter and they had helped a little. This idea was not successful and we had to do push-ups as punishment. After that, we decided to try and use ropes and tie it around the log. We would have people pulling at both ends of the rope so we could all balance but that didn't work and we had to do lounges for punishment. Next we decided to go on tables and have each of us have a hand on the cardboard but our counsellors said it was the wrong method. Then, we asked for a hint and they made us do human sit where we needed to be in partners. We had to lean on each other and sit as if we were sitting on the toilet seat. However this time, the toilet was not there. We had to hold it for 45 seconds and it was a pain!!! However we had succeeded by taking a picture of all of us and placing it on the cardboard and then all of us had to get on logs and tables so we were not touching the ground. WE HAD FINALLY DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE. Our counsellor said another method was to write all our names on the cardboard. In the end, I found out the game was a play on words: to have all of the team touching the cardboard without touching the ground. And I thought, this was so cheap because our thoughts were to complex and a simple method would have been able to accomplish this task. Soon after, when it got really dark and once again we were all blindfolded and guided to different spots in the campsite. The goal was to meet together and to go in order of our mother's name without talking. While we were waiting for all of us to be guided to our designated waiting spots, fireworks started to come up and it was nonstop for like 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes, I was completely scared because I was all alone, blind, animals might eat me and it was really dark. In the end, we had succeeded in one try. It was getting late so we had our big bonfire and ate tons of marshmallows. Darn, we forgot to play chubby bunny. This game required the participant to stuff as many marshmallows as they can in their mouth and to try and say the phrase "Chubby Bunny" every time they stuff a marshmallow in their mouth.
After the bonfire, we retreated to our tents and I took off my socks and changed into my pjs. At night, I awoke many times during the night because it was so COLD. My feet were freezing, my body was shivering and my head was just dead. I was so cold because I had such a light sleeping bag and my head was just outside without a hat. To solve these problems, I placed a t-shirt on top of my head and to wear two layers of socks. Unfortunately, I did this just 1 hour before I had to wake up to start the next day. I learned a great lesson on packing especially for the cold.

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