Thailand Adventure
Part 1: The Senior Trip

Exciting day! There's nothing quite like waking up in the cold, drizzling winter and knowing that by the end of the day you'll be hanging out in the tropics. Because of where we were meeting up to take the bus to the airport, Nelle and I did have to walk in the drizzling wintery rain, wearing only clothes that we would want to have with us in Thailand for 2 weeks, so it was a very brisk walk, to keep us warm, and because we were, as always, running a little behind. We were each put in charge of a group of about 8 seniors, organized by color, with bandannas to match. I was the Reds (Be the Reds!). In the past, herding 50 seniors around inside of airports, with tickets and Alien Registration and money changing and immigrations and EVERYTHING, has ended up being a minor disaster, which it shouldn't take too much work to imagine. So we keep a pretty close eye on our kids.

Travel there was long. ("there" is the Maekok River Village Resort, or MRVR, which is where we live while on the senior trip. The British couple who built/own the place do run a resort, but the place also has facilities specifically designed for teams of students coming through for a variety of reasons.) We flew into Bangkok, and caught a connecting flight up to Chaing Mai, a fairly big city up north. We spent our first night at a hotel here, right next to a night market that is pretty popular with the kids. This location is also the most likely source of "The Plague" (more on that later). The next day, we took big vans even further up north, almost right to the border between Thailand and Myanmar, to Chaing Rai, which is where we stayed. It wasn't that bad, I guess--only a day and a half of constant travel--but it felt like longer. Probably because we had to be constantly vigilant of the kids. Pretty much everyone was exhausted once we got to the MRVR. The kids were all in bunk-rooms, 6 kids to a room, and the chaperons were in single rooms in the gender-specific dorms. What to do with a married couple, though? Well, they do run a resort.... :D So Nelle and I got to say in the resort section of the place, which was really classy. It's $80 a night to stay there, and it was just really tasteful and beautiful. Far nicer than we could have afforded.

Once at the MRVR, there were a variety of activities the staff there had planned for us, both on-site and out in the hillsides. On-site, we first did some team-building things, then various color groups cycled through a rotation of activities like Hiking, Mountain Biking, Tubing down a river, a low ropes course, and probably some other stuff. We also worked some in the local community with the hill-tribes.

**Explanation**
About 100 years ago, the border between (then) Burma and (then) Siam was the Maekok river (which I have now tubed down). The powers that be realized, however, that if the river were to say, flood (not an impossible scenario to imagine) and change it's course, the boundary between these 2 countries would shift. Worse, if the river were to cut a new channel for itself and create an oxbow lake, it was conceivably possible that people could wake up one morning and be citizens of a different country, if the river had changed course drastically enough. To fix this situation, the political boundary was moved northward, to the main ridge of mountains north of the river--the watershed. Depending on the specific location, this newly designated land between the old border and new that now belonged to Thailand was, in some cases, a lot of land--enough that there were not only whole villages, but whole ethic groups, lived between the two borders. These people now technically live in Thailand, but the Thai government has never really been that excited about welcoming them--they are, after all, not actually "Thai", but Burmese--so they don't receive the same kind of support a normal citizen does--schools, ID cards, public utilities, etc.
**End Explanation**

CAJ has gone back to the same area for 3 years now, raising money to buy the materials needed for the students to work to improve the quality of life in these villages. This year, the studnts worked to fix up a schools bathroom (it had been used for years by people wandering by the school, and had deteriorated to the point that it was pretty much unusable), and to continue work on a nursery facility. We actually got to spend the night out at the school in tents one night, after a fun ceremony where the elders of the village and the heads of the schools swapped songs around a campfire with us. things were organized so that out of the 6 color groups, 4 were working and 2 were teaching english and playing games with the kids. It was at the beginning of this work time when The Plague struck.

At first we thought it was just that the students weren't staying hydrated--it was super hot, and we were all working really hard. So, at first, when one or two kids came and complained about not feeling well, we gave them a hard time for not drinking water, and told them they coudl lay inside until they felt better. And it was the ones who were already pretty sickly, anyways, so we weren't that surprised. At first it was one kid every other hour or so, not that big of a deal. One of them had a temperature, so the nurse was checking her regularly. She got the chills, OK, but it was still something that she could have picked up in Tokyo, the flu or something. Then one of the "dehydrated" kids started getting chills, and we found out he had a high temperature too. Just on a whim, the nurse checked a few other, and sure enough! Temperatures all around! The most common symptom seemed to be diarrhea and a fever, with the chills, aches, and everything. The slow trickle of kids getting sick increased in frequency, until more than half the kids were lying down, or had been taken back to the resort. The nurse started getting concerned about our food and water supply being contaminated, and started asking where the nearest clinic or hospital was.

At the peak, something like 33 out or 47 kids were all sick at the same time. It all came to a head the 3rd night there, when some of the students were so dehydrated the nurse wanted them on IV's. While we were there, the doctors did some tests, and came back with a prognosis--Typhoid Fever. AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaggggg! The plague is upon us! Would this be the last senior trip for CAJ? I ended up doing a night shift in the hospital with two sick students who were getting IV's. One got done after about an hour, and I called back to the resort to have him picked up, but the last kid was taking forever. Finally, sitting around until about midnight--nearly 4 hours--reading and watching stuff on my iPod (and watchin stuff through open doors--yikes!), a nurse came over and told me that the kid had probably another 5 hours left to go on his IV. We reached an agreement--I could take the studnent back to the resort, with his IV still in, and bring him back in the morning before her shift got off. But what to do with the IV? I learned the hard way that it actually is really important to keep the IV bags elevated. (Ever wonder why the tubes don't just fill with blood? Well, I still don't know, but I do know that they will if the bag isn't raised!) I asked if, since we would be coming right back, and she'd still be there and everything, we could just take the IV stand from the hospital with us, and bring it back when we came back in the morning. She agreed! Perfect!

All told, 40 out of 47 kids came down with it, and all the chaperons but Nelle and I got it. Once more tests were run, the general consensus is that it was food poisoning from the hotel we stayed at when we were traveling through Chiang Mai. So, no Typhoid. It was still scary in the moment, though.

After our time had ended, we headed out to the airport in Chiang Rai for the flight back to Bangkok, and then Tokyo (for everyone but Nelle, Tom, and I!!). To get to the airport, though, we got to have some fun! The Maekok River runs right next to the place, and they have a dock and everything, so we got to take these long, skinny boats for 2 hours down the river, which, after being filthy and hot and dirty, was just a welcome change of pace. The kids and I played "Hey Cow", as there were cows and water buffalo periodically along the shore or in the water. We did get stuck on a sandbar once, actually only 5 minutes after we had started our journey. As they zoomed by, all the other groups laughed at us struggling in the knee-deep water trying to dislodge our boat. It was great!

The boats didn't take us all the way to the airport, but they did take us to an elephant camp! We all got to have a turn lumping along on the back of an elephant, which is actually a somewhat jarring experience. The trek took over an hour, and included an amble through the river for the last few hundred meters. A lot of the kids bought banannas and sugar cane for the elephants, so we had fun feeding them all. They really are such big, gentle animals. Some of the kids got to "drive" the elephant, sitting on its head, while the actual driver just wandered off, talking to the other elephant handlers. I didn't get to, sadly, but we still managed to have fun. There's always hope that I'll go on this again next year!

From there, we took vans to the airport, and flew into Bangkok. Nelle and Tom and I were supposed to stay with the group as long as we possibly could before starting our own Thailand Adventure, but we weren't quite sure what that would look like. The kids had about 5 hours in the airport between flights, and we were expecting to have to hang out with them until 10pm, although hoping not to. As it so happened, the airport separated the connecting flight people from the baggage claim people almost immediately, which meant that we would leave our kids behind. It was actually kind of sudden--most of the kids were in front of us, up escalators and everything, when we realized that this was our parting point. The other adults were with us, so there was no confusion, but most kids didn't even realize that we weren't behind them anymore until they gathered up a few minutes later.

And from that point on, we were on our own Thailand Adventure, this time down south in the tropical-land!! What happened on this trip? Where were we? What was it like to go back to Koh Chang? And why didn't I wash my hair the whole time? Check back in a bit to find out!

Home, safe and sound! Totally uneventful trip back, except that the 747 we flew from Bangkok to Tokyo had really bad sound on their movies, so now I've seen "Quantum of Solace", but couldn't follow the dialouge at all, so I have no idea what it's about.

All in all, it's been a little depressing to be back. At the point I was getting off the plane in Narita, I seriously believed, just for a moment, that someone had turned up the air-conditioner WAY too high. Then I remembered where I was, and a cold, bitterness settled upon my heart that matched the weather outside.
(sigh)
I think I may have been designed to live in a tropical country.

Check back--pics to come soon.

Hi from Thailand!  We left the seniors at the Bangkok airport after some fun times in Chiang Rai, and flew down to the Bay of Thailand the next day to catch our boat to Koh Chang.  Turns out it's gotten pretty stinking busy and expensive there, so after 2 days we took another boat to a more remote island - Koh Maak.  I'd sorta been hoping to go here for a while, so I'm glad it worked out.  Things here are awesome--there are very few people on the island, which is small enough that you really could walk everywhere...if only it wasn't so stinking HOT!  it's a charming place that actually has a purpose in life besides tourism (coconut and rubber plantations that are over 100 years old) so it lacks that glitzy/grungy feel of places that exist only for tourism.  We've got another 3 nights here, then back to Bangkok, then back to real life...

Finally! I've been pretending for so long that I'm not going to Thailand, just because i knew that i wanted to be there SO BADLY! and the weather recently has been awful here--constant rain, just above freezing. we've had to go to the laundromat to dry our clothes. the laundromat! as if we were one of those rich snobs! but no more--as of tomorrow, i'm off to the land of sunshine and hotness. one of the reasons i know it's going to be awesome is that the supplies i packed for a 2 week trip could fit in a medium-sized grocery bag. I just LOVE tropical places!

So the first week will be in Chang Rai, working with the senior trip. So, I won't be teaching, but i'm told it's a lot of work. I'm looking forward to it. I will also apparetnly have my first ride upon an elephant. I've heard they are delightful creatures. As happened a few years ago, Nelle and I will be staying in Thailand after the seniors leave--the trip backs up to spring break. So week 1 will be lots of fun hard work up north, and week 2 will be lots of sitting around on beaches and driving scooters to remote locales. i'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. I hope to come back with all sorts of photos, but if you're curious about what it's like, here's some pics from last time. funny historical note-last time, nelle and i had only been dating for like 8 weeks when we did this last time. seems kinda like it could have been lot of strain for a relationship...but we had so much fun doing the same kinds of stupid things, it just made everything better. I was glad to know that she's the kind of gal i could have adventures with. and yes, it was good to know what her reaction would be if i crashed a scooter with her on the back (she's pretty forgiving, turns out). So, here's the pictures from last time, and Here's a map of the area we're planning on being in the vicinity of (nothing too concrete, you know). Aaaaand I'm outta here!

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!

Man, so much cool stuff has happened that I can't post about, because I never finished my stress camp blog.... :'( So, I'll finish it quickly.

The next morning we woke to a light but steady drizzle, the kind that soaks you before you really notice. Some of the kids woke up pretty wet, but I way warm and dry! This was probably the hardest day for the kids to hike. They were tired and wet, and the ones that had been hiking the slowest were also the ones that had set up their flysheets the worst, so somehow that made them hike even slower. At one point, two of our gals from up front actually came back from the peak to carry one guys' backpack up the last bit for him! Wow. Thinking about it, the group really represented both ends of the spectrum--I feel I had some of the highest-quality gals I've ever had, but the slowest 2 guys I've ever had. Hm.

We made it to the hut in time for a late lunch. It had stopped raining at this point, but was still wet; the low temperature coupled with the wind had motivated us to never stay still for too long on our breaks. The hut actually had futon and quilts in it, an area for a firepit, and a little stream. These are all wonderful things. We sat around out front and ate our lunch, then I had the kids go inside while I explained our activity for the day--a solo. We had a handout for them with a story about integrity on it, and I told them the rules: Don't leave where I put you, use the whistle for emergencies, etc. I also promised them emphatically that I would not forget about them or leave them out in the woods anywhere. They aren't supposed to know how long they'll be out in the woods, but I sort of blew it...I told them that we'd be staying in the hut that night, which a few of the brighter ones realized meant that I would be leaving them in the woods for kid of a while, since it was only lunch time now. It might have been good to at least give them that, though. I talked to them about it later, and a few of them initially thought that a "solo" was for like 20 or 30 minutes. I left them out there for 4 and a half hours! I think if they hadn't known that they were going to be sleeping in the hut that night, some of them would have sunk farther and farther into despair with every minute.

So, I set off down the trail and dropped the kids off. Some of them spent the time sleeping (until it got dark, which freaked them out too much to sleep...?), trying to build fires (none of the guys did this, which i was surprised by), and at least one person was praying/reading scripture at the top of his lungs, which was actually pretty cool to hear bouncing off the hills in the fog.

While the kids were doing this, Bea and I were hanging out, talking and laughing, and getting stuff ready for when the kids came back. We tried to get some firewood gathered, but had a hard time finding much that was dry. Eventually I found the motherlode--siding and flooring leftover from the building of the hut! I brought a saw with me, so I went to town. No worries about a fire tonight! We got my stove set up and got supper going so the kids could have supper when they came back in from the cold. When I finally went to get them, it was well after dark, so it was extra freezing. I was glad I'd had them take their full packs with them on the solo--last year on the solo, the kids got so cold one of them actually blew her whistle in a panic, and they were all chilled to the bone. This year they were fine. Yay for learning!

The theme for the solo is supposed to be integrity, and we have questions that are supposed to guide our discussion to that end, but I didn't really like them, and the kids aren't really going to open up and share ways that they lack integrity in life with 11 other people that they don't know terribly well. I asked some of my own questions, had them share their experiences and whatnot, and it actually turned into a surprisingly good conversation. As much as I like to let the kids volunteer to talk, I learned that sometimes we just have to go around the circle and everyone talks. Next year I'll start with that, and move towards volunteering information at the end. Hm, hm... very wise.

As is becoming the standard, Bea and I were planning on sneaking out of camp an hour before the kids broke camp, so we went and found the leaders and broke the news. HA! they were super nervous. I was scared that they were just going to find the nearest road and walk downhill, but in the end they chose to follow the path, which I liked, and which turned out to be some of the coolest geography I've seen on stress camp.

So that night, all the kids bundled up in the cabin, sleeping on futons and under quilts. I couldn't help but feel a little guilty--where were the other groups sleeping tonight? What ever happened to roughing it? I felt like I was doing them a disservice my making stress camp too easy. I still do, a little....but we'll give this curriculem a few years, and see what the kids are saying about it when they're 20 and 21. That's when we'll know if it was worth it or not.

ok, i want to keep going at this--too much stuff is happening these days, and I want to get this wilderness camp stuff out of the way, so i can post pictures of halloween and projects and stuff! So:

Stress Camp
Day 2:

We'd been up until midnight the night before, so I felt ok about letting everyone sleep in until 8am, and nobody seemed to mind! this being the first morning, however, everyone was really sluggish, and even though we didn't eat breakfast until we'd been hiking for a bit, it still took us until about 9:30 to break camp.

The kids in the lead that day were having a hard time...well, leading, really. eventually i talked to the whole group about it. they were good about waiting for the slowest person to catch up (they never really picked up on the whole "slowest person first" thing, though), and then they would wait for the slowest people to be ready to go. the slow ones, though, were just fine sitting around as long as they were allowed to, not really realizing that the leaders were waiting for the ok from them. this meant that we'd take breaks every 30 minutes, and some of the breaks were 15 or 20 minutes long. not great progress.

every year, i end up taking the hardest, or one of the hardest, routes, totally by accident. in fact, every year i think to myself, "ok, last year was just too hard and too long. let's make things a little more enjoyable this year." when i say that to myself every year, there's a problem. i think, somehow, the group just ends up hiking far, far slower than i think is even possible; i mean, i plan the route assuming we'll be going really, really slow. maybe i just forget? anyways, this year was shaping up to be pretty much exactly the same. we would trail markers with distances on them, and the kids would exclaim, "we've gone 2 kilometers already!" and i would inwardly echo them, but with less "excitement" and more "chagrin". it was shaping up to be another long hike into the night. The kids didn't know it, but i was actually hoping to be in another hut for the second night. i know, i know, totally sissy, blah blah. in my defense, when i was making these plans, the weather was supposed to be really rainy, so it seemed like a good idea.

anyways, back to the "present", the kids leading, also the only kids with a watch, kept stopping for breaks, but not stopping for lunch, which i thought was strange. we were eating snacks like crazy (another thing i have a problem with is passing out snacks--it's just sort of a hassle usually. i bought a new pack this summer, and it has an "easy access" zipper on the side, and, as nelle pointed out, the more snacks i pass out the less i carry. so, we finally stopped for lunch at about 3pm, right next to a road; pretty much the least picturesque spot on our hike so far. as the kids munched on costco bagels and nutella, my co-leader beatrice and i wandered off for a conversation.

the problem is, in the woods, it gets dim at 4, and totally dark by 5. it was now 3, and we still had to do our activity for the day--a blindfold walk/follow hike-thing. because of slow guy #1 and #2, we were 50% of the way to the second hut, which meant at least 5 more hours of hiking. if we didn't want to hike to the hut, though, and chose to stay outside, the best spot for staying outside, according to the map, was ironically about 5 minutes away. conundrum: do we do the activity well and call it a day, or do we rush the activity and hike long and hard? the weather was pretty good, not too wet or anything... my gut desire was to hike all the way to the hut. after all, we really hadn't gone that far, or hiked that hard, but in the back of my mind, i remembered the surveys last years' group filled out. when asked if they would ever do something like this ever again, all but one of my kids circled "under no circumstances". and even though i knew the kids could make it to the hut, eventually, i just didn't want them to hate wilderness camp. besides, i realized, if we stopped now, we would get to the hut about lunch the next day, and we had a solo planned, and the hut would be a great spot to base the solo out of.

so that's what we did. bea (co-leader) and i ran ahead, and found a clearing just like the map said. interestingly, it was a chestnut grove, full of those little spiky things. the thought of being beaned in the head with one was on everyone's mind.

The activity went really well, and we still had time afterwards to hang out in the grove and learn how to put up flysheets and everything. Bea and i had some fun with a can of bug spray and a lighter--she discovered that literally exactly where she'd been planning on putting her head to sleep was a slightly buried bees' nest. BEES! it wasn't too big, but there were probably 50+ insects in there. so we did what any responsible hikers would have done: we toasted them! in my defense, some of the gals in the team were paralyzingly afraid of bees, and i didn't like the idea of pissing off the bugs and having them, you know, swarm and kill and eat us. because this is what happens in the woods.

I did laugh harder that night than i have ever laughed on wilderness camp in my life, but unfortunately it's a story that doesn't transfer very well to text. briefly, though, the important parts of the story are that most of the guys on the team were very easily scared of the dark, and i was very good at sneaking off the second they stopped watching me. my moment of glory was when i "disappeared" by hiding behind a tree, and the guys looked back and screamed, "OH MY GOSH!!!! MR. POTTER'S GONE!!!!!" and the whole group of guys, having just finished a pee-trip a ways down the trail, sprinted for camp in such a panic that they actually ran across the trail and down into the woods on the other side. THEN not only was i "coming to get them" (by laughing silently behind a tree), but they were "lost" to boot.

It was interesting to me that they really were terrified to be out in the woods alone. they were absolutely floored when i told them that i could, and would love to, spend the night in the woods alone, or hike for a few days on my own. they sort of have this "us or them" mentality about nature, rather than seeing themselves as a part of nature. probably has something to do with technology. stupid computers.

we got a raging fire going that night, using only soggy wood and the power of teamwork (and the skills of an amazing fire builder). our mac and cheese actually boiled over! and it was so, so delicious. as we were bedding down, some of the gals sharing a flysheet began laughing hysterically about absolutely nothing, and showed no signs of stopping. they were keeping everyone awake, and i thought, "if they have this kind of energy, we really didn't hike hard enough today." other than that, though, i really don't regret the choice to stay. like i said, it means they had a much more positive time!

Stress Camp '08
Day 1
(At last...)

One of the things we started doing a year or two ago is releasing the group information to the kids about a week in advance, so the kids know who they're going with, and there's time to have a meeting or 2 before we're actually out in the woods. It works really well--I get a chance to tell the kids what's important and what's not, how to build a fire in the rain, how to poop in the woods, do the maps/compass thing, etc. One of the things Nelle and I talk about, that we learned from someone who went through the same Masters program Nelle's in now (in Leadership, if you were curious), is that you have to be careful where you place the stressors when you're doing leadership training, or any sort of "learning game". If it's an easy initiative, make the groups stressful; put them with people they don't know or wouldn't usually hang out with. If it's a pretty stressful environment, you have to ease up in other ways. Which is why we don't wait until the day of to announce the groups anymore. And now we can pack ahead of time, so we actually leave CAJ at a decent time of the morning!

Because we were going somewhere that nobody had gone before, I actually had to go out and buy my own set of maps, which was fun--the kids are used to there being some safety net, some adult that will swoop in and save the day if they mess up, but I only had one set, and they got it! So, I said, I would have no idea where we were going. Of course, that's not strictly true--I had another map, just way more general and zoomed out. In addition to the maps, the kids that were leading got "the only" watch, so they had to get people up, choose where/when to eat and camp. More actual leadership!

As I said, I went somewhere nobody's gone before, as far as I know. I just didn't want to deal with bumping into other groups, competing for camping spots by cutting time off the group initiatives, etc. One of the other leaders were getting really possessive of their route, at one point actually telling Nelle that she wasn't allowed to hike on the route that she had marked on the maps, as he had apparently claimed it. I wasn't there when this happened, which is good, as i probably would have told him his butt smells like cheese, as a rebuttal to his elementary-school, "No fair, I saw it first" statement.

So I decided that rather than go out on the Seibu-Chichibu train line, and hike south to the Ome line, which is where the Okutama Bible Chalet (hitherforth referred to as OBC) and the end of our hiking is, we would actually take the Ome line out all the way to the end of the line, and hike a big arching route back. We were most of the way out there on the train--almost two hours of train travel--when I ran into my first major issue: we forgot the medkit.

Well, let's be honest here: it was totally my fault. When the team first assembled (that's just fun to say), i set it aside until we knew which set of students would be the first leaders--it's the responsibility of whichever team of kids is leading to carry and dispense the medicine (within reason, of course). this is one of the ways not only to give the kids more responsibility, but also means one less thing for me to cram into my pack. double bonus.

So, I admit, as I sat in the train, just a few stops from our destination, the idea did cross my mind (breifly, Brent) that we could do the trip without it. What a horrible idea! Ha! but still, I admit, i thought we would just be wasting our time waiting around for hours and hours for something that, in 4 trips, I had never needed, or really even opened, once. Instead, I did the "responsible" thing, and called some of the emergency numbers, to ask if we could get one delivered to us at all. no answer. i called some more of the emergency contact numbers. still nothing. silly people, i thought, they underestimate my ability to have an emergency before really even starting the trip!

I only ever ended up getting through to a teacher at CAJ, who really couldn't do anything for me. I sent the team ahead by bus, planning to catch up by taxi if i could, and wandered through the sleepy town at 10 in the morning, looking for a drug store. I ended up finding one, and even managed to get a pretty good little kit together, using my limited medical knowledge and some good old trusty hand-motions: medicine for pains, stomach stuff, poopy-stuff, etc. I then took the next bus up to the trailhead where the kids were waiting for me. all told, we lost about an hour. not really that bad.

The team was waiting for me at a pretty cool floating bridge. We filled up with water there, and hit the road. The route I had picked had us getting most of our elevation that first day, to make our way to a major ridge. There was (on the maps, at least) a shelter of some sort up on the ridge, and the plan was to hike well into the dark, but make the hut, so we wouldn't have to worry about setting up camp. it worked really well, actually. we were letting the kids lead, and we were going really, really slowly--interestingly, the 2 slowest people were guys. one of the slow guys had mentioned casually as we filled up water at the dam that he hadn't drank water since he could remember. thinking he was kidding, i played along, only to find out that he has drank only carbonated beverages since he can remember. mind-blowing.

Anyways, it would be drudgery to write about the actual hiking, other than that it was pretty steep and the weather was pretty much perfect. eventually, we made it to the hut, and the first thing we saw when we went in was a medkit with a note and a snack. evidently, someone had gotten the message, and, since we had all logged our route beforehand, the staff at the camp had hiked out and left us a present! even though we didn't have to set up camp, we still had to get a fire going and cook, and we didn't settle in until about midnight, so I decided to let them sleep in a little the next day. After all, this was more exercise in a day than some of them got in a month!

Pre-script:
This started out as the same entry as the re-telling of the events from Stress Camp 2008, but grew into something different, so i'll post it first, mostly just to get it out of the way. It's sort of long, and maybe a little boring, but explains the rationale and change that has happened within stress camp. It's at least worth a skim!

The mentality of stress camp in the past seems to have had more to do with teaching survival skills, showing students that they are capable of more than they think, and being a lesson for overcoming obstacles. Also it was good for them to have an actual adventure, where unexpected things happen and there are no easy outs when they get too tired to go on. And, to be honest, i agree with a lot of those reasons. it really makes me mad when kids give up on hard stuff. it boggles my mind that these kids have never, as far as they can remember, gone one single day without some kind of gadget. and they've re-defined "adventure" to be something you do on the internet! and so, for the last 1,000 years, stress camp has been going on as a time for kids to get out of their comfy little lives, and go experience a real adventure, do something really hard, and accomplish something they could be proud of. And i do think that these are good, true things.

The problem is, that's not really defensible. CAJ can't really sell that one to the parents. Kids have been trying to get out of it for years, and more and more, parents have started trying to get their kids out of it. And I can't really imagine the reasons that CAJ gives: "One day, we'll all be chased into the woods by the invading armies, and if your kids don't know how to build a fire, they'll never survive the first week!". Well, to be fair, it was probably something more down the lines of character building. So, in the past, the idea was to have kids have a "good experience" (in the sense that it was good for them, not that they enjoyed it), that they would remember for the rest of their lives, and be proud of. And what if the kids aren't proud of it? What if they're overweight and have a horrible time? The overwhelming response from students, when asked "would you ever do something like this again?", was "I would rather suffer death by fire-ants". Seriously. The single greatest effect Stress Camp had was to convince kids that adventuring outside is horrible, and we have earned the right to stay inside with our machines, so that's where we'll be. Maybe 1 kid in each class would go again, and they probably had that mentality before they went out into the woods anyways. Most of the kids (and they've started handing out a survey after stress camp every year, so this is actually based on fact) would never, ever do anything like stress camp ever again if they had the chance to.

So, something had to change. It all came to a head a few years ago, in the now-infamous "typhoon year" of stress camp (my first year as a leader, incidentally). parents were furious that the administration was forcing their child to sleep outside in the woods during a typhoon. and the administration realized that stress camp could no longer continue as it had been for eons, but would either have to be stopped entirely, as the values of stress camp no longer matched up with the schools goals for the students, or the school would have to figure out just what it's goals for the students were, and re-work stress camp to fit with those goals. which is what they did.

In some ways, nothing has really changed--we still go out and hike in the woods and sleep outside and build fires to cook over and things (the western, "leave-no-trace" fad has yet to catch on...), but now the leaders carry curriculum with them, too. The idea is that they learn some stuff from the experience, stuff that translates to other contexts besides being in the woods (although knowing how to poop in the woods is a valuable life skill, I've found). Each day there is a theme, and there are verses and quotes that go along with these themes, as well as questions and opportunity for discussion. The themes all have to do with leadership, and help the kids (in theory) to become better leaders. Additionally, for each theme there is an activity of some sort (blindfold walk, solo, etc.) that helps the kids to experience or think more deeply about the theme.

I was suspicious, I admit. I was skeptical. These are good things, in theory, but to do them well requires a fair amount of time, which means that much less time hiking, and actually going somewhere. Last year, i didn't really build in the time to use the curriculum, cuz I'd never used it before and had no idea how long it would take or what it would mean to use it. So, the activities were all rushed, the discussions ended up being more like lectures by me, and the whole thing really felt like it was forced, added on. Which, to be fair, it was. This year, though, things were different. Which was hard for me to do, cuz (ironically) it meant that things weren't as hard for the kids!

For starters, we hiked around in a circle....

And we're off to Wilderness Camp! (aka Stress Camp) Nelle and I are both leaders of our own groups, which is scary and exciting. it's also pouring rain, and it's supposed to keep doing so for at least 3 of the 4 days we're out there. so....that's...something. actually, i'm going on a new route that nobody's done before, and i think there's huts for me to sleep in at night, if we really need to. nelle, though, is going on a more central route, so she has to duke it out with 2 other leaders to see who gets the dry sleeping places. one of the other leaders has been sick for a while, and just last night they finally made the call that she wouldn't be going, so they're having to split up the 5th group among the other 4, so each leader is getting 10 kids, or thereabouts. my co-leader this year is a young-ish australian gal, and i'm pretty excited to have her going with. i have a 0-for-4 record of my co-leaders ever coming back to lead again, so i'm hoping she'll break that trend.

more from the other side!

So, this is my big comeback. It's been a good year, with lots of stuff happening. I went through some of my pics from the year and picked out some of my favorites. They are in a sort of apathetical chronological order--the ones that are really obvious are sort of in the right place, and the ones that nobody really can tell the time of year are wherever they decided to be. I've spent the last hour editing the HTML trying to get this to where it is, and i'm not changing it. Anyone who's tried to arrange pictures in here knows what I'm saying. Check back at some point, and hopefully I'll have the pics set up so you can have a little context when your mouse hovers over them.

But for now, I need to get to bed--tomorrow's my first day teaching real classes to real students. Except that i'm not actually teaching Bible tomorrow--that actually starts tuesday. But, on the books, I start my career as a full-time Bible and Woodworking teacher tomorrow, which doesn't explain why I've been doing this, something that has no relevance. Or, maybe it does, considering that I've spent pretty much every waking minute for the last week preparing, sorting, moving, cleaning, shopping, blah, blah, blah........(snore)

***EDIT***
I updated again, so now if you let your mouse hover over the picture, you'll get a little description of what's going on.