Ok, last one!
So, last morning! As is becoming the custom, I think, the other leader, Bea, and I made plans to sneak away whilst the children were sleeping. I was actually sleeping outside so as to sneak away more quickly. Bea was sleeping right inside the door, so that I could easily wake her up when the moment was right--I had the only extra watch. Which, turns out, I set the timer for, but failed to actually turn on. You'd think I would have learned something in college! So, we made it out, but not with as much extra time as we'd planned; we made our getaway something like 20 minutes before the kids' alarm went off. Yikes!

The student leaders for the next morning know we're leaving, just for safety's sake, and so they ask us any questions they might have before we leave, but they're sworn to secrecy. So whey their alarm went off, they got to break the news to everyone: they're on their own! It's not really true, of course. Bea and I went back up the trail just far enough that we could hear them go by, but they'd not be able to see us. And we sat, and waited, and I learned all sorts of interesting things about Australia from Bea. Did you know that the only reason anyone in Australia would go out into the woods was if they had a deathwish? It's so full of poisonous EVERYTHINGS that it's against the law to hike anywhere without a professional guide. She said her friends would flip out when they found out she was in the woods for 4 days straight as one of the leaders!

The hike down was fun--trying to stay close enough to keep tabs on them, but far enough away that they wouldn't see us. There were a few times that we suddenly realized that they were closer than we thought, and stopped in our tracks, and there was one time when I thought we'd stumbled on them around a corner into an opening, and one time when I really did. It's hard to hike fast enough to keep up (I'm learning that the kids really hike unbelievably fast that last morning), but still try and keep an eye out. The time I thought we saw them, I actually hurt myself falling on the ground trying to keep out of sight. Turned out to be a tattered piece of tarp. The second time, I really was probably less than 15 feet away from them. There were a few stretches with big boulders to clamber down and around, and I rounded a corner and just about threw myself off the mountain trying to get back out of sight. The trail did a switchback, and the whole group was struggling through a tough spot right below me. Ha! They never saw me, but it made for fun conversation later.

As we neared the end, and the town we were hiking to got less and less distant, I realized that I had told the leaders to go to the town, but had said nothing about what to do once they were there. Because I had the bigger picture, I knew that it was the same town we started from, and the Camp we were headed to was a few stations back, but I had never told them! Bea and I caught up to the kids just as they were heading to the nearest police station to ask directions. They had suspected that we were back there, they said, but they were still pretty surprised/excited to see us. We moseyed to the station only to find that the trains only come every 45 minutes, and one was leaving in about 1! As the often do, the stationmaster told us to get on the train, and pay wherever we got off. I love Japan! (and we did pay, of course!)

From there it was a sort-ish ride back to Camp, and exciting reunions--some other groups caught the same train as us, and some of us had spouses waiting at camp! We weren't the last group in, but we were the last to go through the food line and the bath line--we had a really long debrief, which actually makes me happy. We went around and all shared stuff we learned about ourselves, and encouragments for others. Definitely my best debrief yet.

Yay!