so, hiking. good times. camping with a bunch of 17-year olds. again, good times. Let me just tell you about my weekend. I have made some interesting discoveries.
discovery #1: the outdoor pursuits teacher is a dink. he's the one who put this whole trip together, and I swear to God, if I had not had another teacher friend with me on this trip, I would have left in the middle of the night without a second thought. I don't want to bore you with the details, but suffice to say it turned into my friend and I chaperoning the whole gd trip, including *leading* the pack of kids up the mountain, while the teacher enjoyed a leisurely stroll up the mountain with his girlfriend and another couple friend of theirs. We sat with the kids, played games with them and stuff, yelled at them to shut the hell up when it got to be about 2am and we had to drive for 5 hours today to get back here. The teacher...was either in the cooking cabin or the tent with his friends for the whole weekend. Good times. Most oft' heard comment in the tent with my friend, "I fucking hate camping." and / or "I fucking hate *insert teacher's name here*."
discovery #2: excercising does not help cramps, as I had previously read / been told. Not even a little bit. I'll also spare you details on this one, but as you can well imagine, this discovery went along with some other unpleasantness.
discovery #3: apparently, I have exercise-induced asthma. I was not aware of this, but I have also not ever tried to climb a mountain. I've been out of breath lots of times, I'm not exactly in peak physical condition, but this was completely different and really frightening; my throat closed up so I was all wheezy, at one point I could barely get any air in, so naturally I freaked out a bit and started crying, which was very helpful to my calming down and being able to breathe normally. I felt like a complete tit, especially for having been crying in front of Mr. Dink, and didn't get to go up to the top of the mountain. I made it just over halfway up, and I wasn't tired at all, and I was just generally pissed off to have to go back to the bottom, but I never would have made it.
discovery #4: kids, when left unattended, will throw just about anything in the campfire, including, but not limited to, giant plastic bags which held wood, water bottles full of water, and styrofoam cups. I'm sure they would have thrown more in, but we had limited ammunition for them, being at a camp site. Along with this, kids are really sort of stupid. They can all hear each other in their tents, but they were remarkably, and repeatedly, surprised when my friend or I would yell at them from our tent to shut up and go to sleep. I got "I thought they were asleep!" and "how did they hear us??" and my friend got one "oh, fuck off" when the kid didn't realize it was a teacher telling him to quiet down. That was pretty funny. She was like, "Pardon me?" The kid was like, "oh, shit, ah....sorry Madame.."
discovery #5: camping in the rain and cold is really, really unpleasant. I didn't have a sleeping bag, so the outdoor pursuits teacher lent me one of his. It was the size of a very small pillow, when in the bag. I was assured it was good, but it really wasn't. It was Thinsulate, but I'm sure designed only for summer camping. It was easily 0 both nights, and damper than damp since it literally didn't stop raining for more than 10 minutes the whole time we were there, and I froze my ass off. I was sleeping in flannel pj bottoms, sweat pants, 2 pairs of socks, a t-shirt, hooded sweatshirt, and winter hat. I was still cold. I was warm for like 20 minutes, and sooooo blissfully happy for those 20 minutes, but then it got damp and cold and I was like, "I fucking hate camping." again. I think I will go though, this summer, when it's not raining and freezing, and there are no people I don't like, and no students, and I can drink. Those things will all make the experience much more enjoyable, I think. Anyway, I'm home now, and clean and dry and relatively warm, but in dire need of some sleep. I was supposed to go on a weekend canoe trip with the same bunch, but without my friend, and there is just no way in hell I'm going. I've given my notice, so I don't feel bad at all.
I hate camping.
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