Sydney at camp

Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - Friday, October 19, 2012

Sydney went to camp with all the other Year 7 girls from St. Mary's.  This is her account of her days at camp.  Sydney took a camera, and her friends were nice enough to take lots of pictures of her doing the different activities.  She was dropped off at school at 7:15am.

Our Shelter

I am on the high ropes course.

We rode the bus for about 2 hours.  When we got there, we found out who was our camp instructor for the 3 days was and who was in our group.  Phil, our instructor, told us to sit in the forest, and we played get to know you games.  Then Phil took us out into a more woody area, and we were split up into groups.  Every group had to make their own shelter.  Next we hiked our way to the high ropes area.  We learned how to belay.  Then off we went.  I like these kinds of activities.  After that, we went to step up our camp.  We had to find a spot to put up the tents and find tent mates.  We made a living room and a kitchen.  We had to cook dinner.  We cut up carrots, zucchini, chicken, capsicums, and snow peas.  We cooked them all together and added noodles for a stir fry.  We had to keep taking more even though we weren't hungry anymore because Phil didn't want any to go to waste.  We went to bed early.

The tents we slept in.

All the food for the stir fry

Vertical Climb

Crate Climbing

On Thursday, we woke up at 5:15am.  We had to pack up all our bags and tents because tonight we were going to sleep in a cabin and breakfast was early.  Our breakfast was powdered milk and cereal.  It wasn't good.  After breakfast, we went to the crate climbing station.  Crate climbing is when you start with one crate and you go back and forth as high as you can go until you fall over.  You have on a harness, 3 girls are belaying you, and another girl is stacking the crates.  For lunch, we had to mix all these vegetables, chips, sour cream, and cheese together in a bag.  You mushed it together, and it looked like vomit, but tasted better than that.  In the afternoon, we did a vertical climb.  I was the fastest.  We had dinner and went to bed early again. 

Helping belay

Putting on the safety gear

Swinging on the giant swing

On Friday morning, our group went to the giant swing.  It was my favorite.  For the giant swing, you are put in a harness which is attached to a rope.  The rest of the group pulls the rope until you are as high as the two telephone poles.  Once you are up there, you pull a red string, and you free fall for a couple of seconds.  Then you are swinging on a gigantic swing.  I went upside down.  We got to go two times because our group worked quickly together.  Then we went canoeing.  I jumped into the water.  The water really wasn't very cold. 

We headed back to school in the afternoon.  I enjoyed camp and wished we had these camps for school once a year in the states like they do here.