Ah, camping. Camping to most people means crappy tents, s’mores, latrines, and a whole lot of mosquitoes. That’s what I pictured my trip to West Virginia to be like. Mmmm…. not exactly.

We did have tents, s’mores, and a whole lot of mosquitoes. Luckily, we had a plumbing system! But on my camping trip, we did some extreme sports. White water rafting, zip lining, and rappelling. The white water rafting really gave you an adrenaline rush! We went on class two to class five (!!!) rapids. My friend fell out of the boat once, but we managed to get her back in. My guide was really nice and quiet, until we hit the first rapid. She screamed at us so loud that we started to panic. I was at the front of the boat, so I got wet. A lot. Twice, we were allowed to get out of the boat to go down “Swimmer’s Rapids.” I did it. It was fun, but the first time I got crushed against a rock and the second time I got pulled under water for a little while. We also went to “Jumping Rock,” a rock that you obviously jump off of. I’ve jumped off tons of bridges before (no joke!) so it was no problamo for me. But when we hit the class five rapids, my whole boat got freaked out. Our guide started talking about the undercut rocks, which means that water goes under the rocks. If you go under, you don’t come back out. Being in the front in that situation is scary. I almost fell out a couple of times there, but we made it through!

Zip lining was fun, but not as exciting. We zip lined over five ones, all about 80 feet up. Once we had to zip line to a tree platform, about 90 feet in the air this time, with about a foot of space. Scary. I got stuck on the zip line, my pulley flipped over. I had to be rescued by the guide, who said that this was the first time he’d seen someone get stuck. That made me feel better.

Finally, rappelling. This was intense. We had to climb down an 80 foot cliff. You could also free fall down a 55 foot cliff. I started with the 80 foot one. It was scary throwing yourself off the edge of a cliff, but once you got the hang of it, it was okay. The 55 foot one was FUN! You just drop.

So, I guess you call what I did “camping.” I had tents, bugs, and s’mores. But I also had fun sports, good food, and plumbing.

Have you ever had any cool camping experiences?

Posted: June 23rd, 2008 under Personal, Random.
Comments: 1

Today was a day was a day to remember. Today I graduated! WHOOOOO! I’m no longer a middle schooler! I can get out of my crappy middle school with an annoying principal! The ceremony itself wasn’t great - our guest speaker was Kimberly Something from Channel 7 News. She went on and on about how her vocal cords were paralyzed for like three months, which of course had nothing to do with us graduating. After about 30 minutes of that, she talked about the “7 Things You Should Do in High School.” That took an hour, no joke. And several times during that, she went back to her vocal cords story. It was all very strange. My friend and I had played our saxophones as a duet as part of the procession music, so we had to run back to our class, because we were the second advisory to cross the stage.

I felt confident as I walked across the stage - I thought I looked decent, and I loved my dress. I remembered to stand up straight, as I have a slouching habit, and I shook with my right hand and took my diploma with my left. I didn’t trip, which was something surprising! When I walked off stage, someone unexpectedly took my picture, so I probably look super surprised in it. But I don’t care. I’m just happy that I made it out without:

1. Getting detention. I’m an angel, I know.
2. Getting suspended/expelled. I think my grade set a new record for number of expulsions and suspensions in one year!

Afterward, I went to the cafeteria and hugged all my friends. We’re all getting split up into different high schools this year, so we’re all really sad. A lot of people cried, and I must have taken over 100 pictures. But we all looked pretty, and we all know that we’re going to IM and call each other constantly, so it wasn’t that sad.

When I went home, I had a graduation present waiting for me. Actually, my brother did too, even though he’s only going into 7th grade. We opened them, and they were….drumroll please… LAPTOPS!!! My old one was sooooo crappy so I’m so glad I got a new one for high school. I love it so much, it’s a lot faster and clearer than my old one.

That was my day. I laughed, I got nervous, I was surprised, I cried a bit, and I was happy. It was a bipolar day. Oh, and GO CLASS OF 2012!!

Posted: June 13th, 2008 under Personal, Random.
Comments: 3

Hey everyone - please excuse the “interesting appearance.” Wordpress is acting strange and I’m uploading the new layout so it’s changing this one for some reason… but I’ll have it worked out soon enough! Thanks.

Posted: June 1st, 2008 under Site Updates.
Comments: none