Catalina '06

First, let me make an observation here: We girls at apartment 11 have a slight addiction to homemade chocolate chip cookies. I think cookies are made nearly every night over here. I don't understand how all of us aren't fat as heck yet.

But that's a side note.

So here's what happened this weekend.

At approximately 10:00am we congregated outside of the west dorm, packed our necessities in a trailer, and headed north. We boarded a boat for Catalina and made it to the island before dark. Then we made the long trek to our tents, about a five-to-seven minute walk from the town. We unpacked, hiked back to town for dinner, hiked back to our village, and sat around the campfire for a couple of hours. The night game was "Honey if you love me, please smile," a game where the person who is "it" has to go up to someone randomly and try to make them smile. Let me tell you, we have some hardcore frowners in our class. Josh was the most entertaining, with his approaches to Aaron involving slinking along the ground and grabbing his hand then running back into the group and darting around from the other side.

As the next morning was April Fool's, a certain person on our side of the village thought it would be best if we pulled off the first prank, so all alarms on the girls' side were set to 3a.m.; screaming at the top of our lungs would commence at 3:05. The plan was to wake the boys, then pretend to be asleep, but a few chronic gigglers ruined it for the rest of us. From across the road came a groggy boyish roar of, "You think that's funny!" which, of course, just spurred the gigglers on.

We were all awakened again at about 5a.m. at the sound of all the rain on earth cascading down on our peaceful little campsite in torrents. The entire earth was shades of gray, there were deep puddles everywhere, and no one could walk more than a couple steps without getting their shoes weighed down with the clay-like mud.

Breakfast that morning was made interesting with Andy and Brent's stories of what happened on the guy side at 3 a.m. that morning. According to them, they awoke to our screams, jumped out of bed, and their only thought was, "Something is eating them and I have to go kill it!" They also informed us if something ever did happen they would be the only ones to come to our rescue, as the most any of the other guys did was roll over. Great. Thanks, guys.

The day was spent at the beach, playing volleyball, kayaking, fish shooting (also called spear fishing), and sun burning. The day had cleared up dramatically from the showers of the morning, and as the sun shone, the roads also dried, making for a much nicer walking experience by the time we got back up to camp.

We sat around the fire eating dinner (and the fish Daniel caught) before a game of OTL was established, boys vs. girls. Jenna, Anna, Heather and I were going to demolish Aaron, Josh, and Paul, but we decided to be merciful to them and let them have an early lead. Later on, we all went back down to the beach again, climbed on the rocks, looked at a few crabs, then crashed on the sand with conversations of the evils of Myspace and Paul's regaling tales of what he's going to do after he graduates (among these include banking and being a pirate).

The next day brought us a warm sunny morning and my favorite day of the year (daylight saving's time day), and I didn't even complain about getting up an extra hour earlier than I already was to go on a special Jon Morse hike. Six of us set out for a view of the second harbor of Two Harbors, and fortunately all six of us made it back. I say fortunately because on the way back to camp we ran into a huge buffalo that could have killed us just by staring us down. Thankfully, God has more plans for each of the six of us and the massive animal made its way peaceably back to the road.

We had about an hour and a half or so of just lounging around the beach, then we all met up at the pier, made ourselves some sandwiches, carried all our stuff aboard again, and headed back to real life.

Sigh.

It was a good trip. Relaxing. Fun. Adventurous. I think we should do it every weekend.