Blog 23/04/2014

I love talking about nostalgia. Memories, history, something like that. I have a long list of nostalgic places. Today, I present you: memory: outward bound school.

It all started on a hot summer day in 2013. It was the 20th of May, two days after I turned twelve, so I was still an emotional little girl. Despite being extremely experienced with Outward Bound, I still felt intense nervousness. It was the first time going to camp with all of my fellow sixth-graders. It was a five-day camp.

I wondered, how would it turn out? In my past experiences, Outward Bound had the ability to make the strongest people tear up, force the bravest people to falter... Would I, being a weak and timid girl, survive until the end? I certainly didn't want to display my ugly crying face in front of all my classmates.

On the morning of the camp, I sat down for a few minutes. I told myself to be brave, act strong, since I had past experience, and it would not be as scary. I tried to open my heart to receive the new experience with joy.

It wasn't long until I felt crushed. I had three close friends, they were in the same group, and I was the only one singled out. I felt like crying but there really was no point to. Everytime I saw their group, I would feel my heart ache. It was just sad. To be honest, amongst my teammates, there wasn't even one person who I considered a trustable friend. It was horrifying; what if I needed someone to talk to?

The first few games were simple ice-breakers. I came to know the groupmates better, even though it was just obvious shallow knowledge about them. Perhaps because we all knew we had to be with each other for many days, we all tried hard to get along with each other. The conversations among us went well, but it all felt forced.

On the first night, some of my groupmates cracked dirty jokes, which was when I started to feel frustrated. I was no fan of dirty jokes, so it was extremely frustrating. In extreme frustration, I went to take a bath. They took it as a joke, since I tried to seem nice. In the end, I became more frustrated.

On the second day, problems started arising. One of our instructors was extremely mean to us. It was obvious that she didn't like us, and kept on nagging about focus and teamwork. We were working on a mini task when the three of my friends' group passed by. I said hi to them, and as a result, I got lectured by the instructor. When we were angry at her for interfering with our business too much, she sensed it and treated us even worse.

Later that day, when we were walking around the enormous campsite, one of my groupmates brought up a topic that made me feel bad. I told her to stop the talk, just to get laughed at by her. I felt so terrible that my eyes just couldn't be controlled anymore, and tears came rushing out all of a sudden. That girl laughed at me for being too emotional, and I got so much angrier.

Another problem was the weather. Rain poured violently continuously for like, three days. We had to wear Outward Bound's ancient rainjackets, which had an unbearably terrible stench. Furthermore, from how they cleaned the rainjackets, I doubted if they were cleaned properly. But oh well, at least we had rainjackets.

We were kayaking right in the middle of the huge sea when lightning and thunder came. It was scary because the waves moved much quicker, causing our kayaks to rock vigorously. Furthermore, since our shoes were put in an open area, I had to wear wet shoes for the rest of the days. The worst things happened on the night of the black rainstorm, when our clothes and wet shoes in the open drying area got flushed away. I never found my dry shoes afterwards.

Another big problem was emotion. It was not only me who had emotional problems, some of my strongest friends also broke down due to various reasons. It was just scary, seeing some of our strongest emotional pillars break one by one.

There was a dark time when the other dorm building, Bayview, was rumored to be affected by lice. I was lucky to stay in Seaview, the other dorm building. One of my friends from Seaview went over to Bayview and came back with bad news. She usually was the cheery type of person, but she started crying, much to everyone's surprise. With her breakdown, many other people started to sense how serious it was and started crying too. Because a lot of my friends were there, I became worried and cried too.

Lastly, there was one activity that I still remember clearly -- the jetty jump. It was nerve-racking. One of my friends was still laughing on the platform before the jump. The instructors weren't even able to give her a push before she just jumped right down. I was one of those who hesitated a bit. I was scared to death, since the platform was very high up, and I still could not figure out what was going on because of my fear. At the end, I was finally able to convince myself, and I jumped right down.

However, there was one person who was particularly mortified. She stood on the platform up there for five minutes, feeling too scared to jump. The atmosphere was filled with tension, and I could feel her fear. She looked as if she were in extreme pain, and that scared me a lot.