Speckled Green

Wake up at 5:30 am….
Not my earliest… but Still early. At 6:30, I start moving about. At 7, that’s when we all get up. Some people have showers, others brush their teeth after not doing it last night. Then it’s time to go outside to line up for breakfast. The people with the special diets once again get to go to the front…. but I’m not jelaous.. After a hearty breakfast, we went to our next activity, Flying Fox. What fun it was, a great 50m long flying fox! Well, I think it was 50m….

Afterwards, a quick morning tea before Absailing. 10m wall for me. Jasmin took the 5m because noone else was… Ben and I went up together, just cause he wasn’t bothered going up on his own (it’s a tad bit boring up there waiting all the time…). Sandra took the 5m wall, and took a while to get started, I think because she has a slight uneasyness with the thought and feel of starting to absail. While that was happening, the guys were playing around with the rope that was strung between 2 trees (it was for holding the harnesses while a group was there) like doing chin-ups (Simon did heaps, I stopped early so I wouldn’t get sore hands… Simon got the sore hands….) or using it to do flips. Ben was like “Do a flip on it” I do the flip, using the tree infront of it. Simon said I was a cheater. Ben then said “Do it with out the tree.” I did it. Once again they called me a hacker…. just cause they can’t do it that well…….

Lunch (yet again stuck in the middle of the long line…) and then off to the beach! (Oh, wait, is that good? It was like it was going to rain…) where we started off with body boarding. Some people had to go back and get their rash-shirts… that might’ve been slightly annoying…. then we went into the surf! Gee, it was cold.. After 20-somthing minutes, my leg got a cramp (It hurt alright) but I eventually moved back to the shore, where later I got ANOTHER cramp (why me?!), which almost ruined my time at the beach. My leg was sore for the rest of the time there (but I got used to it…… eventually…….), so I missed out on learning to surf. Instead, after they did a little surf-safety and taught people how to paddle and stand, I went with the rest of the people who didn’t/couldn’t do surfing at that moment (most of us were just sick of the freezing water) and went to sit down. In the end we got Jolene to stand in a small pit we had dug, and then piled up sand around her, so that she ended up being buried up to her knees ( the best we’ve had for camp for someone standing up). It was funny to see the short people stand around her and be taller than her!

Back to school for freetime and dinner, then heaps and heaps of free time before we went on a night walk to the headlands. The walk there was wonderful, nice deserted beach, and a wonderful view of the coast from the headland. The wind was blowing, and all these people with jackets… it wasn’t cold, that’s why half of us were in t-shirts. Then we had to go back, which was a shame, but back we went. Talking to a friend or two on the way back, out walking most of the pack, and being first in line for supper! Isn’t 6 meals a day great?

To bed, and this time, no long talks, we just went straight to sleep. Thankgoodness for that.

So, after frantically (sorta) packing my bag over the weekend, and getting driven to school early, I went on a school camp, with the rest of year 8, to the Collaroy Centre of the Salvation Army. The main reason why we were having this camp was because Mrs Pigram, our year advisor, wanted to take us somewhere to learn surfing (which I ended up missing out on), but also to give our grade the responsibility of leadership and organisation, something our grade needs more of.

After roll call, some things from the teachers about how they expect our behaviour to be, and getting onto the bus, we were finally off. An hour and a bit long bus ride, where a couple of seat swaps, loud talking, feeling like this trip is going forever and yet so short, and playing cards (I still don’t quite get the game Big 2, someone teach me one day, perhaps?) When we got there, we milled about as we got organised, then had morning tea. After shifting our bags to our cabin rooms, we walked down to the beach. There we had some games of beach volleyball, beach soccer, flags (which I didn’t get to do… such a shame, and I might’ve won…) and a quick review on surf saftey. After that, we went back to the camp for lucnh.

After lunch we had our first activites. First off we went to canoeing. There, I went with Jasmin (who said she knew how to paddle. I didn’t.) and we went out, and I quickly got the hang of it (Thankgoodness) and promtply started making us go in circles! WOOT! While we were canoeing, a few of us tried some, …unusal… racing, which ended up with Edmund in the water after capsizing. Soon after, Ben asked Simon “Hey, do you want to capsize?” as a joke. Simon, like normal said “Yeah ok!”. What made this worse was when they did actually capsize after that… and Simon lost his glasses to the lake. After helping take the canoe back to an island in the middle of the lake, we headed back to shore. There, as she was getting out, Nicole tipped over and ‘capsized’. Poor Nicole…

Getting out, I was interested to see that I wasn’t as wet as I expected I might be.. I thought that I might have splashed myself a bit more. As it was, my pants and shoes were only slightly wet. Then our supervisor decided he’d get us to play a game called ‘The Magic Knife’ He goes (and points at people with each word, just for the effect) ‘This is the maigic knife, the magic knife, the magic knife. This is the magic knife, who did it kill?” and then he’d tell us who it killed. He then wanted us to guess it. In the end, it was Jasmin and I who we accredited with working it out (I told Jasmin, cause she asked me, I found out by overhearing one camp leader comfirming with the other when she caught on to how it worked.). Way for overhearing! That goes with something I hold onto. Think and Listen, and you will learn.

After going back, and having a quick afternoon tea, we went to our next activity, Challenge. There we first got onto a beam, and had to organise ourselves by D.O.B., without speaking to each other or touching the ground to move around (we cheated, we whispered when he wasn’t listening, and quickly swapped (sometimes) when he wasn’t looking.). That was fun, interesting, and hard.

After that was the maze, where 2 people had to navigate a third person who was blind-folded without proper words (some people used chinese, but the leader doesn’t know that…). That can become slightly hard with everyone else shouting as well…. I lead Simon down the wrong path for fun, so Ben got him to go through the rope fence

Next was Nitro, where we had to get people from one side to a 1.5m2 tarpolen on the other side by (it was just plain ground underneath) by swinging on a rope. Add to that that we all have to stand on it (we had Kapilan and the largest group) and you have to take a can of water across with out it spilling anything……… you get the picture…

After that was the ‘Wall’ were you have to get one person up a 3m wall, then he/she can help the next person up, and then they can help the rest up. The last person has to jump up cause only 2 people can be ontop, and the rest can’t help once they’re over the wall…. Simon was last in our group every time cause he can jump the highest (I can probably jump as high as him) and is relatively lighter than me…. actually he’s heavier, but he can do the jump grab better than me. Then we had to go get ready for dinner… the line takes ages to go through and be served…

afterwards, we had a little spare time before Night Games in the conference room. There we played a few random games before going to our rooms for 1 & 1/2 hours before lights out. As expected, all the boys were talking about sex related things for AGES! Finally, they shut up at 11:30, when I finally drifted off to sleep at midnight… as I was the one who always answered someone who asked ‘what’s the time’ I was tasked with getting people up…. despite Ben being our ‘Room Rep.’…

Hail in at the end of a chinese lesson is something (that cut it short!), but also while you’re in the school? I don’t know what the damage bill for the school will be… not that high I guess. This hail though forced the Hills Salvos to have to root up all their gear that they set up for their Carols in the Park (This year at Jasper Road Public) and shift it inside the hall, and that caused no end of trouble. But, still, the best part of the hail storm was it interrupting the last 20 minutes of my lesson! We were just sitting there, talking, making a few jokes while working, and then loud noises “gee… that can’t be hail, can it?” I go over to the window – hail stone… more hail stones… “it’s hail all right”

1 second later: “HAIL?! OH, I WANT TO SEE!” And there you go, every one goes to the window. So we have loud noise of hail, I think the power went out, there’s loud thunder when we go outside, the hail is creeping in the through a gap in the windows, and the place was like it was flooding…

Why does it seem the close you get to Christams, the more hectic life is? Maybe the fact that Christmas is coming up has something to do with it…

Life for me is a little, only a little, busy at the moment. Last week was people’s b’days and parties, this weekend is friends over and a carols night, next weekend, HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!! Well, after this weekend and the school camp, then it should be easy going. Just the last few days of school, science maths and commerce homework to do (why do they continue to pile on more work?) Anyways, soon I’ll be in year 9… scary…. Read more »

More people are turning 14… is the end of the year a great time to have children or something? Well, to start off, today one of my friends had their birthday. Happy Birthday! Secondly, on Wednesday, it’ll be Kusthab’s birthday (did I spell it correctly? edit: I didn’t spell it correctly, but I’m too lazy to fix it, despite writing this note). Happy Birthday to you as well! Read more »

Well, I’m back again. After having 2 virus sneak onto the computer while I was still fixing it….  I’ve had to reformat the computer, but all seems well now. I’ll be a bit parranoid for a while, though (you don’t think having 3 anti-virus/anti-spyware programs is going a bit overboard, do you?).

Yesterday, performed with my brother at his teacher’s student concert. I was playing the piano part to his peice (He plays clarinet, if you don’t know). And I also waited while 96 updates downloaded and installed on my computer, and there’s still another 50 to do today! It’s amazing how many bugs these OSs have…

Today, right after church, I’m going to a kind of farewell lunch for someone at ABC College (some of you may know what I’m talking about). Its going to be hard getting there right after church, but we’ll manage. Then, today, I’ll be skipping Chinese lessons (don’t worry, my mum I’ll teach me today) so that I can have a rest (I’ll need one today, all this work….) and then I’ll be going off to Sandra’s B’day party. Because I forgot to do this on the day, Happy Birthday Sandra (your birtday was on the 27th of November, right?) Sorry for it being so late.

And just a little note to myself (and anyone bothered to read it): The best way to stuff up site is to reset passwords, not remember them, then fill site with useless files and a log that reports your errors in your scripting, Anthony you would know