Teen Ranch has heaps of activities. There was archery, horse riding, canoeing, the giant swing, ropes course, rock climbing and a couple of other stuff as well.
As I am so terribly modest I won't go on and on about how wonderful I was at everything. Simply because I wasn't. I was...average. Three of my shots did get pretty close to the bullseye in archery, but all the other shots went off to explore new places.
Horseriding was great, although at first I thought that my horse must have gotten the name Blade because a blade of grass could move faster than he could. He ended up getting a move on though.
The scariest thing that I did there was probably the giant swing. There was a harness that was pulled up on an angle until it was a little more than eight metres high. Then you would pull on a rope (like signing your own death notice) and fall backwards then forwards ect. Sort of like a giant swing...(More like the giant drop!)
The second most scariest thing I did (#1 mentioned previously) was the high ropes course. Only the adults were actually supposed to do this but the junior leaders wormed their way in. The high ropes course was even higher than the giant swing. You were harnessed up and clipped onto cables, but the scary thing was that no one was holding you up. It was all you. And there were times when you had to undo your clip-thingy to clip it onto the next obstacle and then nothing was holding onto you..........................I'm a very brave person......
The theme of this year's kids camp was 'The Princess and the Goblin' by George MacDonald. As junior leader I got the massive privilege of dressing up as a goblin (along with my other goblin friends) so that I could scare the kids as they came along the path for their bush walk.It was pitch dark. I believe they scared me more than I scared them. That night (and also the next day) I also had the great opportunity of:
- Stepping in mud (At least, I hope it was mud) in my nice new-for-me converse.
- Getting thrown (Fully clothed) into the pool (Twice!) by my not-so-nice, treacherous goblin friends.
- Laughing as I watched those not junior leaders getting chased by this! (Payback for chasing me so I that stepped in err...mud.)
Despite all this I really did have a good time...
Oh yes, and I can't forget to talk about the bus trip to and fro. I don't think I've ever actually travelled in a bus going to a camp before, and I gotta tell you, it was really great...Apart from having to sit next to those two large Albanian woman, with crucially severe body odour. And that little kid at the back of me kept throwing up the whole time. And the serving lady ran out of Dr. Pepper and salted peanuts.... Oh yeah, and three of the bus engines burned out, and we went through a tailspin and crashed into a hillside and the bus exploded in a giant fireball and everybody died....
Well, actually, that's not very true...The only thing that happened was that the kids sang happy camper songs very loudly (and very off key) the whole way sending me half deaf and half crazy. As always though, I kept my calm and on the outside, looked a very happy camper. But on the inside...
Jordan
