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Period 3

9/19/07

Personal experience essay

This past summer, I spent one week at a summer camp with my youth group. I learned a lot at this camp about making friends and rolling with the punches. The camp was a wonderful experience and I made some great friends and had a wonderful time, even though we had a few troubles along the way because of the horrible weather.

As soon as we learned about the trip in late June, I was so excited about going. I had planned to have a good time and have fun in the sun, so had all of our leaders. They had planned all sorts of swimming events and told us all to pack lots of cool clothes and sunscreen. Well finally, the day came that it was time to go to camp. I had packed all my clothes and I made sure I brought my sweatshirt and some extra shirts just in case the weather was bad one day. Then, we all loaded up in the vans and headed off to Fairholm, where our camp was going to take place.

We got to camp and it was still all sunny so we unpacked our stuff from the vans and settled into our tents. I was in a tent with 5 other girl and I got to be the tent leader. When we started setting up however we ran into our first problem. Under our tent the ground was all rocky and uneven. Luckily I had brought 2 sleeping bags but I later learned that that wasn’t enough. After unpacking we all went down to the main campsite and played a game and hung out around the campfire. Then we explored a little and had our lesson in the evening.

The girls and me went up to the tent and lay down to go to sleep. None of us were very tired however because we were so excited for the next day’s activities. Eventually though, we all fell asleep. We woke up in the morning and found out that it had rained a little and they sky was all gray. We carried on and did our bible reading and lesson and then we went down to the lake and swam. The water was really full of Lake Weed and very cold but when we jumped off the dock we didn’t really care.

By the next day almost everyone had wet clothes and everyone was feeling miserable. In fact, the boys’ tent was so full of bud that they ended up having to sleep in the vans. We did our daily morning activities and headed out to Sol Duc. That’s where I first started to change. I was having fun swimming but my sister and Ashley well they wanted to stay in the hot springs. I didn’t really hang out with anyone in the youth group because, in case you didn’t know, I’m really shy and not very outgoing. I decided then though that I would find someone who wanted to swim with me.

There were a few girls in the youth group, Jara, Alleah, and Nicole, whom I didn’t really like, but I decided to see if they wanted to swim with me. It turned out that they did and we ended up having a great time in the pool, and were really sad when we had to leave.

The next day we had planned on it being sunny and everyone was going to dry their clothes when we went to Wood’s Cabin (the lake cabin belonging to Jeremiah Wood, a member of the youth group.)

We got there and things looked really good. It was kind of foggy but we expected that it would clear up and we could lay things on the dock to dry. But it never did and many people decided to get out. I decided however to stick it out and swim with the girls whom I had so much fun with the previous day. I had so much fun that day and that’s when I realized that by going out of my comfort zone I could make some really good friends.

By the end of camp everyone was wet and cold and wanted to go home, including me. But I now realize why it is such a good thing that it rained. First of all had it not rained that week my house could have burned down due to a forest fire just across the street from my house! Secondly, if it hadn’t been rainy and cold then swimming in the lake would have been colder because, and I don’t know why, but when its cold out the water seem warmer sometimes.

Overall, I feel like that camp really helped me change my life and was a great experience I’ll never forget. I learned to not judge people and that sometime you have to go out of your comfort zone to meet good friends. Also I learned that like they say," when life gives u lemons, make lemonade".