Camp

The question isn't what we did, but rather what we haven't done. I'm itchy, sore and tired but it was all worth it, because camp was fricken awesome baby! I've actually only gone camping twice in my life. The first time was in year 7, and i used to think that was the best thing ever, but Year 9 camp made it look so crap. The activities were better, the dance was better, the snacks were better, the group arrangements were better, the instructors were better; pretty much everything was better except for the beds. We ended up sleeping on gym mats on wooden bunkbeds that looked like they would collapse any moment. I ended up sharing a bed with my friend Danielle because her one looked REALLY dodgy, and that was not cool. I couldn't stretch or go to the toilet without kicking her face or waking her up. Her soft toy was pretty scary too. It was a 'zoozoo pet' that looked like a carebear with buckteeth, and whenever she leaned on it it made a noise. There was this one time at night when I pressed it and it made a noise that sounded like "nhewnhewnhew... VRAAAAAAR!" To me, everything is 10 times scarier when the lights are off, and at that time i was convinced that the toy was demonic.

Everything I thought would be bad turned good. I thought canoeing would be the worst activity, but it turned out to be one of the best ones i did. I don't even know what made it so fun since I practically did nothing but sat and hopelessly attempted to paddle. Maybe it was because of the people I went canoeing with- Esha and Matthew. I laughed so hard that I'm amazed we didn't capsize. We ended up looking like she capsized though because we had a water fight. The other activities were super cool too, especially Mudworld and the Leap of Faith. I swear, the Leap of Faith has got to be one of the most nerve-racking things I've done in my life. My hands even got sweaty just watching other people do it. You had to climb a 15m pole, stand on top of it and leap to catch a trapeze about 1.5m away, but when you're up there, it looks like 5m away.

Another thing I thought would turn out bad was the grade disco. I was surprised to see so many people dance and lose their voices. I was thinking, if we all look like that then, how would we look if we were actually drunk? It felt so unreal at the time. I don't even remember half the things I did that night.

But the highlight of the camp has got to be playing Commando at night. We had the right sense of adventure and the freedom to run around in a bush. I truly feel sorry for the people who weren't in our group for the game. I don't think we even played the game properly since with thought all the 'hostages' were scattered around in the bush. We ended up not finding any hostages at all, but that doesn't matter. We ended up walking really far off. We walked far enough to see some random building, so we turned right and kept walking. There were points where it was so thick that we had to get down on the floor and crawl where there were less twigs and leaves. There was this one time when a teacher, or our 'enemy' was only a couple of metres away. I think my heart rate zoomed fast enough to seem like just one long buzz rather than multiple boom-booms. The torchlight was even on us for a split second, but he didn't see us. After a while we decided to get back on the main tracks, because we were walking through too many spiderwebs and there were too many branches in the way. It took us a while to find it. I know we were really far off though, probably even in out of bounds areas since we couldn't even hear the whistle which signalled that the game was over. Two teachers had to come to find us. If only they didn't- it would have been even more fun.

I almost cried on the bus on the way home. I don't ever think I'm ever going to forget those campfire stories, staying up until midnight talking to my best friend, and all the things we did. I even slept on the bus dreaming about camp. I swear I could've slept for the whole bus ride if my friend Naomi didn't put a chip next to my nose while I was sleeping. I even laid on my bed for an hour singing break-up songs like 'Bleeding Love' on my bed this morning thinking about camp. I hate the feeling of when you realise that the fun is over. It's sort of the feeling you get when the last person leaves your party. I don't even have any photos of my own to help me remember camp, but I know it's something i'll remember forever and ever and ever.