Dang, this is my first entry of 09. A little late aren't we?
Lol. Maybe I will only update when important things happen. Like things I want to remember, not just the every day stuff. Which I like doing every once in a while but it gets a little boring to write and read. But this whole upcoming week is important because we are starting our new semester in school. I think the last one went really well. I am gonna miss everyone though, especially these guys:
(Click to Enlarge)
Hmmm, yeah it's gonna be a bummer without them. Oh well, hopefully I will see them other times throughout the semester.
So my classes are going to be:
Health/Success
English 2 Honors
Algebra 2 Honors
Speech
Not necessarily in that order because I don't have my schedule yet but something like that.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot the point of this update. This
weekend we went on our Polar Bear
campout. Well, THEY went Friday night. I kinda wimped out and came Saturday Morning. HEY, I wasn't the only one. It got down to 9 degrees! HOLY CRAP! That's the coldest it has been in 4 years here. I bet our guys
froze their butts off!
So I got there around 8:30AM Saturday morning. Reagan was supposed to come in at that time too. I got there and unloaded my stuff at camp and my mom left. Of course, I went through the much expected "you finally decided to show up" stuff from the guys and leaders,
lol. Of course they were only joking around. About 10 minutes later it was time for the
SPL meeting and my assistant, Reagan, still wasn't there. He was bringing our tent so I was starting to get a little nervous,
lol. I got Brian to come with me, actually he wanted to. On our way there we saw Reagan and his bro pull up so I felt better,
lol. By the time I got back from the meeting they already had our tent set up. I put my stuff in and then made sure everyone had their Class A's on for the Flag ceremony and got down there.
They told us about what was planned for the day and then gave us a HUGE break until after lunch. We just kind of went back to camp, chilled by the fire, drank hot chocolate, the usual. Then we had sandwiches for lunch. I found out we missed the 1PM
SPL meeting because we were eating. We told one of the leaders and he told us to go talk to Brenda, the camp leader lady. So we nervously went up there and told her we missed the meeting. She was like "I NOTICED!". Then she said there were only 5 troops that came anyways out of like 17,
lol. She told us about where we were supposed to meet for the first missions and what we were going to do. So we took the info back to camp and made sure each of the patrols had all the equipment they needed packed up and ready to go.
We walked across the camp road to another large, empty field. There, they divided us up into 2 groups, ones talking photography, and ones taking fingerprinting. I went with some of my guys to photography. There, they split
uus up once again. Half went to Mission one and the other half stayed at photography, then we switched off. We went to the mission first. It was "Diffuse the Bomb". The guy leading it was using a funny
terrorist accent,
lol. The group in front of us messed up the bomb by pulling the wires out when they were only supposed to push the buttons so we had to wait until it was fixed. After 10 minutes of not solving it, they blew up,
haha. Then it was our turn. Guess what? We diffused it in 1 minute 29 seconds.
BOOYAAAHH! We figured out how to do it and then tried it again and did it in less than 30, but that didn't count.
Then we switched over to the merit badge. It wasn't that great because the guy
leading it said he had just been
told 15 minutes ago that he was gonna be doing it. He just went over the requirements and let us take pictures. He told us some stuff though so he had to know some about photography. We have to make a collage and label the photos on it and show it to our SM. Sound familiar? Oh wait..maybe not. For our Spanish exam we had to make a photo collage in the same way.
After that we went to one other station but our other patrol/group had already done it so we skipped it and went back to camp. I think we just hung out there until dinner which was hamburgers. My patrol cooked ours
over the fire and it was yummy.
Then we had another
SPL meeting. We discussed RISK and the missions later that night. Then they got the captains ready to play.
So we went out in the big field again and found a random country to stand in. Like last time, it was boring. We decided to get our troop back together and then kind of walk away to the bathrooms until it was over
lol. I don't like that game because if you are captured, you have to go by yourself with a group of strangers for the whole time. After that we started off on the missions. The first one was a laser maze type thing but only 3 people could do it. The next was an
orienteering course. Which...we sucked at,
lol. We even had one of the cool leaders with us. He taught us how to read the compass and stuff, more like retaught us, and then fallowed along with our guides. I have always thought a pace was 2 full steps, which is the way our troop has been taught. Even the leader though that, but i guess not because we were
supposed to go 210 paces at the beginning and at 150 we were stopped for going WAY too far. I'm not gonna run through the whole thing but basically, we did really bad, mainly from over thinking stuff and changing our minds when we were right the first time. We got a 6 out of 20,
lol.
After that we went to another rescue type mission but it was already 11 and our guys were tired and everyone was waiting forever
asnd it just got cold and boring. So a group left before the 3rd one. Actually according to the time we were supposed to be on our 5
th mission at that time but it was really screwed up. Anyways, a lot of us stayed behind and continued on. That 3rd mission was boring. We went in the woods to rescue some spy agent who had crashed into the woods with a broken wrist.
WTF?
Lol. We had to use a
gps to find the spot we were supposed to take the hurt guy.
We went to the next mission but only 5 of our guys could go through. And it took them more than 20 minutes to go over the instructions with them. So the leaders let me, Reagan, and Alex H. go. The leaders were tired too
lol. So me and
Reagan went back to camp, set around the fire for a little bit and then got ready for bed. His little bro was already in the tent sleeping. He sleeps through a lot. He got pushed in his sleeping bag and
Reagan even put his
toboggan on his head while he was sleeping!
Reagan woke me up in the morning because a lot of the guys were up and it was sleeting/freezing rain/ whatever u want to call little round balls of ice falling from the sky. Packing up was boring, cold, and miserable like always. But we finally got it done. We planned to go to chapel and award ceremony but they announced at 9:30 after we were packed that it would start at 11 so we were like no way, we are out of here,
lol.
When we got to the scout hut we set up the tables and unloaded the trailer. Then we set up stuff for sandwiches and the leaders were making some kind of rice and chicken stew. I called my parents and ate while i waited for them to get there. The rice was good, but i got it before it was done cooking so it was cold,
lol. In a little bit my mom showed up and we headed home.
Once i got home i got straight in the shower and soon after took a 3 hour nap. And I'm STILL tired. Hopefully I'll catch up on my sleep tonight. We are off tomorrow but I have a dentist appointment early.
I guess I will close here. I 'm talking to Jake now but everyone have a GREAT night and until next time, have an awesome...couple days! :p Jake have fun on your trip.
Clifton
