Week Two & Three

So, during week two we just did lots of classes.  Sometimes we'd be up at 5:30am and not get fully done with classes, team meetings, and then dinner until 8pm.  Some of our classes would be 9 or 10 hours long!  After that week was over, on Monday, we were to go to Oxford, Mississippi, and do a ropes course.  The ropes course was awesome!! That's my favorite part so far of being here.  I'm scared of heights but I love to face that fear, so I really enjoyed climbing 40 ft poles and then jumping off!  It was a great way to test myself.
    First there was the rock climbing,

I made it about halfway, maybe a little under, but then stopped because I didn't think I could go farther. Later I felt bad, so they let me go again and I made it three quarters or so up! After that it gets pretty tricky, I noticed, from watching others.  I had run out of strength so I knew that time that I did my best.
    After, I climbed this wooden pole, walked across a log, then a wire.

I had to stop on the wire because one, my legs were shaking too bad, and two, I couldn't get the rope above me to move so I was stuck in place.  This one was very scary to me because with this one it required me to look down.
    Next, I climbed up a 40 or so foot pole, stood on it, and jumped off.  That scared me too....

    The flying squirrel was one of my favorites.  Five people are harnessed together, and are connected to someone who stands away from them.  The five people's job is to run away from the separate person, making that person fly high in the air.  Well, apparently the male team leaders and some other guys had waited for a smaller girl to do it, so one minute there are five normal guys and girls, and then the next there's three male team leaders and two tall, fit guys.  Even the instructor commented on how fast and high up I went.

   
    After the "high ropes course" we went to the "lower ropes course".  This one was for team building.  As a team, we went through different games and tasks.  Like all of us standing on a log and having to go around each other without stepping off of the log.  The point of these tasks were for us to work together and overcome the challenges as a group.
    Two of my favorites was the Whale Watch, and when we were blindfolded with one of our team members guiding us without touching us, so only through verbal communication.
    With the whale watch, we stood on a large board that sits on a log, causing it to not want to stay balanced.  Our task was to all get on it one at a time without letting the board touch the ground.  Once we were all on the board and had it balanced after letting it touch the ground about one hundred times, we were told we all needed to go to the ends of the board.  The setting was that we were adrift at sea and we can't let the raft sink, but that rescuers were coming and we had to make room in the center.  Once we did that we were told that the rescuers needed two groups of two to switch places.  We started with the smallest of us and walked across the board as carefully as possible.  After that, we were told that they weren't rescuers coming, but pirates, so we must move to the middle of the "raft" again!  After that we were told that all we could do was join their ranks and that was about it.
    My second favorite, we were told that we were, as pirates, supposed to have one eye, but we had an accident and so half of us were fully blind.  And we also had scurvy so no one could touch us. Blindfolded, my partner talked me through the WOODS!  I did run into a tree a few times sadly, but I had kept my arms in a careful position so I basically maneuvered myself through the thick patches of woods without direction.  My partner did do a great job, though!

    After the ropes course, snow hit pretty hard.  My mom said that they showed it on the news.  That was pretty exciting!! But because of that we had to stay an extra day.  The snow was absolutely beautiful.  I find the way it ways down the snow very beautiful.  When we got back, we had more classes, and hands of peace which is a relationship/team building day of events.

    One interesting part was, eating a sandwich, I managed to pull two ligaments in my mouth, luckily it is better, but that was definitely a whole new level of pain!
 
    I will try to post again next week or the next! :D If you guys actually read all of this then you are really awesome!!