Friday November 14, 2008
First Two Out-Trips!!
It has been a very full very amazing week!!!
The Group: Arden College
The age: Year 9
Numbers:
My Group: 8 very keen girls, one German teacher, one student teacher from MA
This week was different from any other so far; it was the first camp involving an out-trip (a night of camping) and it not only included one out-trip, but two!! I was paired up with Jess for the week and I learned so much!
Arden college, a private Anglican school, makes it compulsory for all of their year nine students to complete the bronze Duke of Edinburg award. I would compare this to an eagle scout or gold award however it is quite different.
In order to earn their bronze D of E award they must complete a certain number of hours on hikes and outdoor activity and keep a log. Youthworks has worked with Arden to create a program that meets all the requirements for the Duke of Edinburg bronze award in the week that they are here. While the students are at camp, they complete a practice hike, camp out, and canoe, as well as a “test” hike, camp, and canoe.
The order of things varied from group to group, this is what the week looked like for Jess and I and group C:
Monday: Girls arrived
Packed gear into packs and headed out after lunch up along the ridge trail
They navigated through the markers, did an awesome job with compass bearings and hit every marker.
Along the way Jess pointed out the trail and gave me hints for remembering the way and knowing if you’d gone too far. I had done the ridge trail twice, once in that direction, and had done the trail coming from Scout Camp but not going too.
Luckily the creek we have to cross to get to Scout Camp / Bangalee was only up to mid-thigh.
Arrived at camp around 6pm.
Set up tents, established our “cooking circle” and began cooking dinner using the trangia (aluminum pots and such that function as a stove when the fuel burner is filled and lit). Three girls per trangia.
Jess, Alison and I slept in a Mega-Mid tent which is essentially a piece of plastic on the ground with a tipi-style tent on top with a pole holding it up in the middle. They can sleep up to four but are not the best in rain as the sides are not connected to the ground cover, like if I rolled over I would have ended up on the grass, a little further and I could have gone under the edge of the tent! Luckily it didn’t rain but I can’t say it was the best night of sleep in my life!
Tuesday:
Pancakes for breakky, which meant cooking circle and firing up the trangias again. All the experienced leaders grumble at pancakes for breakky as they take at least an hour and dirty the trangia again. But since this was just our practice hike and practice canoe we had time to spare. The girls had a pancake competition while Jess and I struggled with our trangia whose pan had a large bubble in the fry pan, forcing us to make small pancakes so they wouldn’t run off the bubble and to the edge of the pan. However, our very last pancake ended up winning the competition with its amazing golden brown color, perfect thickness, and yum!
Working with year nine girls can be quite fun. This group was so different from my last year nine group but then this was just girls and it was a different situation. For the most part they were positive, self motivated, and encouraging. I kept reminding myself that this was not the average group!
Jess let me do the canoeing briefing before we shoved off. It took less than an hour to get from Scout Camp to Waterslea; a nice morning paddle complete with a sing along! There was time for debrief and setting tents out to dry before lunch. Then Christian Discovery and cleaning trangia in the afternoon.
After pool duty and dinner duty, Jess came back to Koloona to take me home for a shower and dinner, which Mel was home preparing. Have I mentioned what awesome housemates I have?? I’m already going to miss Jess when she leaves. It has been pretty awesome spending time with her this week getting to know her since she is already so close with the other girls. There is such a sense of community and just . . . acceptance I guess . . . here. It’s hard to explain but everyone just genuinely loves and cares for each other. I would say this relationship and community is partially due to the experiences they have had together over the years (this being sort of a substitute uni (college) experience for a lot of them), partially due to the nature of the job, and a lot to do with us all being Christians.
Wednesday: After a night of sleep in my own bed, I found myself packing once again. Instead of into a pack, this time I was packing into a large plastic barrel that would ride in my canoe 16 kilometers up the Shoalhaven River.
We left around 9:45 and arrived at Lynches around 3:45 after about an hour lunch break and a few “look at your map and tell us where we are” breaks.
While the girls set up their tents Julie drove down in one of the utes to deliver the packs of three girls in Al’s group. The way it works is one group hikes out, the other canoes out, everyone camps that night and then the next day the groups swap packs for barrels or barrels for packs and go back the other way. It is apparently a bit preferable to canoe the second day; in order to get an earlier start and better conditions on the water and avoid a pretty intense hill right at the start of the hike.
Our group was originally scheduled to do the hiking leg first but after the practice hike and canoe we swapped with Al’s group as they were struggling a bit more where as our girls could use the challenge.
After tents went up the girls took a dip in the river. We had them fill out log books and plan for the following day and ended up just sitting and chatting with them until it was time to start cooking dinner. Jess talked about her boyfriend in England and told the really cool story of how they meet in Uganda on a mission trip (which Julz and Al were also on as it was part of their youthworks traineeship). It was pretty neat just to sit and hang out and chat with them!
Since it is a Duke of Ed trip we are meant to pretty much let the girls take control, doing the planning and leading of their own trip; which is how I ended up setting my watch alarm for 5:08am before I went to sleep on my cushy patch of grass in the mega mid with Al and Jess.
Thursday: The sun had not yet risen fully by 5:20am when we stood just outside the girls tents and told them it was time to get up. Since they had chosen the time, all it took was a “girls, it’s 20 past 5,” since that is how they phrase it here.
Boxes of cereal, fruit cups, and granola bars for breakky so once the tents were in the packs we were off. Ten to seven and our group of eight girls were leading the way across the cow paddock, up the trail as the mist rose off the river and the sun peaked out from behind the trees, sending its awesome rays through the clouds, illuminating the trees ahead of us. Five past eight and they had reached the farm house that sits overlooking the paddock and camp site. By now they had formed a herd, a mass, a pack, driving forward attacking this massive hill of a drive leaving their teachers and even Jess and I nearly out of breath at the back!
At one point Jess and I stopped to shed our jumpers and looked ahead a few meters to see the girls had stopped to do the same; no one had wanted to be the first one to stop.
The quick pace continued until one girl feel behind. This was drawn to their attention several times before they stopped to acknowledge it and do something about it. The teachers, Jess and I kept our distance as the girls circled up and discussed how they would handle the situation. So awesome, so amazing to watch a group of girls interact and work through these types of situations; situations that could only reveal themselves in this type of setting but have so much life application. I can’t tell you how many times this week I thought “and this is my job, I am getting paid to do this!” and thanked God for this amazing opportunity!!
The hike back from Lynches is more or less broken into three parts: the uphill driveway, the section through the bush which includes six markers to be found using map and compass, and the trail back to camp. The girls found the first three markers with ease; the first two being on trails and the third being along a power line. But somewhere between the third and fourth, the girls lost track of their bearing and we found ourselves more or less lost in the bush. We had a general idea of where we were but the truth was quite contrary to the girl’s unfailing belief that we knew exactly where we were and could lead them straight to the next marker.
I was so glad to have Jess there as it was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one who had no idea where we were! Had I been alone I would have felt like the worst most incompetent leader in the world but since I was there with an “old pro” I didn’t feel nearly as inadequate.
The nice thing about this camp though was that since it was Duke of Ed and the girls were “calling all the shots” any questions they asked us could be turned around to “what do you think?” or “it’s your decision.” Instead of it being our problem that we were “lost” it was up to them figure it out. We dropped some hints and suggestions as to what we were thinking and we eventually hit a track that lead to the road. We ended up following the road, getting on the trail to the last marker, having them navigate from that marker to the second to last marker and back before heading on the track home.
On the road to Waterslea.
We had a nice day in the city, walking around outside the opera house, along circular quay, to the rocks where we walked through the markets; crafts, prints, books, and free samples of fresh nuts . . . Redeemed two more of our free drinks through out the day.
