Now, where do I start? How about the part that perhaps sucked the most: the incredibly freezing weather which we experienced Friday night, into the wee hours of the morning. How cold?
Freaking COLD. Granted, my sleeping bag is not rated to cold weather, but I thought that my extra blanket that I brought, my super warm (usually) track pants, and two sweaters would keep me toasty. Wrong. Oh SO wrong. I was up at least every hour because I was shivering. Did you know that you can't sleep when you're cold? Or at least it's really difficult. I'm sure other members of the cabin were cold, too. The cabin had screen netting, but no glass for the windows. It also had rather large holes in it, just welcoming the wind to come in any time it pleased. What the heck happened to the weather we had just two weeks ago? Hot, humid, sunny...nights when you couldn't sleep with blankets because it was much too hot? It's still September, Mother Nature! It's not October, yet! We should have built a fire with the wood that our cabin was made of (actually, if we had of had the primitive fire session yesterday instead of today, we just might have). Apparently the cabin beside us had a heater. I should have acted on my thoughts that I had last night to do a one-man ambush on that cabin. I could have fought off those lucky campers with my hands made of ice! In the early minutes before breakfast I was finally able to coax myself out of my slightly-warmer-than-the-air sleeping bag. That's when the day started. the first session was a rope course.
I've heard of them from my roomies and from people at other camps, but never have I actually done any of them myself. It was interesting, good team work is required for some of the things, though. I went rock climbing for the first time, which was pretty amazing, and scary at the same time. There was another element called the "Vertical Playground" where you had a climb a canoe hanging from a tree with ropes and ladders etc. Can you imagine being asked what you did on the weekend, and getting to say that you climbed a canoe? I didn't get around to doing it, as we were running pretty short on time. Past that, let's go to the canoeing portion of the day. Aka the time that I felt like I was going to crawl into a hole and not come out. This session said that it was for all levels, including beginners, so I thought, "Hey, cool, why not? I went canoeing two weeks ago, I'm pretty much pro, right?" Again, wrong. The instructor wanted to see what type of levels he was dealing with, so asked a question about who could do something called a J-stroke, and they were asked to go to one side of the room. That was Chinese to me at the time, so I assumed that I couldn't do it. At this point in my life I curse my parents for not showing me or signing me up for canoeing earlier. I was one of 2 people who were left on the apparently VERY beginner to canoeing. Everyone laughed as we huddled together with fear in our eyes. I was told afterward that my dear, dear friend felt bad that he had left us alone and should have stayed with the beginners (even though he is CLEARLY wayyyy past that stage...). I can take the heat, though! (Not really, but we'll pretend!) I thought that we were going to be in the clear, since they were talking about some pretty intense strokes and only volunteers were being used. Naturally, I tried to act super small so as not to be seen by the instructors' eyes. Just as we were about to go outside to attempt solo canoeing, the other beginner and I were called upon to "practice" the strokes in front of all of the superior canoers. F.M.L.
Now, while we were in the room being embarrassed by pushing around "roller canoes", the wind picked up pretty heavily. The instructor then said that there is a combination that he doesn't like for canoeing: Solo, Beginners, and Wind. DING DING DING! We have a winner. In my case, we had all three. So, solo was out for me. I've only ever been canoeing once before, and now they want to get me going solo? PUH-LEASE! The water was a little cold for me to want to go swimming (which is what I'm sure would have happened once the canoe had to be tipped to do solo paddling). Anyways, that was a horror for me, and was possibly the longest three hours of my life; waiting, just waiting to make a fool of myself.
Now, after I arrived back on shore with dry clothes my heart rate started to go back to normal compared to the previous hours' experience. On our way to our next session we saw a group of people throwing spades and knives at a dead tree stump.
Way to go, educators! Anyways, after being amazed by a new take on anger management we went on to the last session of the day that had to do with fire. The session was in a very old, very wooden building. So, it's only natural that our presenter gave us materials to try and start the process of making a fire in the wilderness on the wooden floor. No matches, no gasoline, just a few pieces of wood, a knife, and string. Very normal, right? If you agreed with that you may want to seek out psychiatric help, just a suggestion. I'm pretty sure the camp councellors were waiting to see flames engulf the building at any moment. We got the main jist of it! We didn't light the place on fire, though, we felt it would be irresponsible. But apparently our ancestors knew what they were doing at one point in time! Those cabins are lucky we're not there tonight...Anyways, we came home after a long day. Bring on the warm, windless house with nice, sturdy glass windows!!
Currently snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug,
Heidi
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