Edward+Ge

"Beep! Beep! Beep!" my alarm rang. It was six in the morning when I woke up. After walking to my mom, I started yelling and shaking at her, "Wake up!" when she did, I put my white socks and Nike shoes on. Tired and sleepy, we finally got out of the house and went to my mom's black CRV. When we got inside, it was as cold as an ice cube. I could see tiny flakes of snow forming on the windows of the car. After my mom drove me to the old brick school, I noticed that the front doors were open. Two students were holding the silver doors open. Students were never allowed to holds open and it was a school rule. Warm air gushed through me when i walked into the doors. Suddenly, a teacher told me,"Go to the gym," When I looked in the gym, I saw a massive group of students. They were in rows by their teachers and their room numbers. When I found my class, it occured to me that I was one of the last students missing from the class. I was never last in going to school. I had races with other students in my class to see who was at school first and I was always first. Waiting for at least twenty minutes, I felt numb while sitting on my feet. Then, one of the teachers told us that we can go to our classrooms now. Clumsily and exhausted, I carried my red and black bag to my classroom where we were assigned groups. I was shocked at my group because it seemed as if no one in my group was in the same school as I. Getting on the bus, I rushed to the back seats. I was on the right of the bus sitting on the purple seats with no one next to me. To my left were my friends Angel and Vedanth. I known Angel from the first day of elementary school and Vedanth and I became friends the moment we met. We always sat near each other during lunch, played together at recess, and done a lot of group projects with each other. Before we went on the bus, we were told to leave our bags. While on the bus, I kept thinking what would happen to them. Then I remembered, a teacher told us, "Your bags will be in a different bus." Questions kept popping in my mind. I wondered why there had to be a different bus for our luggage. Were there that many students that we had to resort to a different bus to hold our bags? The biggest question of all was when will we arrive at Camp Bernie! It's been over an hour when we were on the bus. I bet everyone was bored on the bus at least once. All I have been doing was sitting on the bus staring out of the clear windows or talking to my friends. The bus seemed to be getting hotter and stuffy. After a long wait on the bus, we finally arrived at Camp Bernie and everyone was relieved. A ton of people yelled, "Finally!" We were at a halt when we rushed to the exit of the bus. Suddenly, a teacher yelled, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Stop! This isn't how you behave on a bus and this is surely not the way you behave in school!" We were allowed to stand up and stretch on the bus, but I still felt numb and stiff from sitting on the bus for so long. Every step I took made a surge go through my legs as if I were paralyzed. Having to grasp on the seats, I stumbled to get out of the bus. While outside, the numbness wore off and I could feel my feet starting to freeze. As soon as I got out of the bus, I wanted to jump right back in. I would have rather been in a hot bus instead of the cold woods. I saw massive trees, mossy rockes, and other busses with students arriving just after us. After getting out of the bus, we got our luggage and put them in our cabins. The cabin was called Terrell and fortunatey, I was in the same cabin as Angel. Although the windows were shut close, the cabin felt as cold as it was outside. When we finished unpacking, we were assigned activities to do with our groups. We wrote our activities on multicolored index cards in the order they were in. First, I met up with my group that mostly had girls and only two boys. After meeting up, we were at a large opening where we waited and were instructed with a tour of where to go. Our fist activity was a rope obstacle course. There was rope in formations I never saw. For example, there were ropes attached to look like a bridge, ropes that a zip line would have, and ropes in many different shapes and sizes forming this giant obstacle course. Although I got through the obstacle course as fast as a cheetah, my group was as slow as a slug. Also, chaperones have commented about me being faster than the group. My group mostly had trouble keeping balance or fitting through the ropes since they were plump. After finishing the obstacle course, we followed our guide to a activity. The instructor had made our group join others as we held hands. The instructor made us into a human knot. We were connected together in weird ways as if you couldn't do this activity without getting pulled apart by people. Our objective was to turn our group back into a circle without breaking the chain of hands. we had an innumerable amount of ideas yelling at us and I was the only one who could figure it out. My plan was that everyone had to kneel down except for one person to go over them to get untangled and everyone standing up with one person going under their arms. After finishing this activity, our instructor gave us a hula-hoop and our challange was to get it around us without breaking the chain of hands before the other team did. Of course, my team lost with a lot of wide people in it. When we finished the race, the same instructor toured us to the woods and ended up to a giant web made of string. Our next challenge was to get through the web. But, when someone gets out of a hole in the web, no one else can use it. Also, you can't touch the rope or else the group has to start over again. Then again, our group yelled ideas at each other and I still came up with the plan that worked. The plan was for me to stick a finger in one of the holes in the web while other people go through the web. Then my team collapsed since they were wide. The next plan I made was for us to hold hands and go through the web and somehow it worked. We took a massive amount of time since the group kept hitting the web. When we finally reached our next activity, we were blindfolded. I wore an itchy blue blindfold throughout the obstacle. The challenge was to go through the maze while blindfolded.Our only hope was to use our hands on a long piece of rope. My hands hot itchy while holding the rope through the maze. In the maze,I bumped into trees, bushes, and other people. I also got tangled in the ropes and didn't know where to go but then it occured to me that I was at the end of the maze. When I made it through, I was guided by a chaperone to sit on a rock. Our next activity was to touch a nearby tree while blindfolded, return to the rock, and find the tree without the blindfold on. I found my tree instantly. When I touched the tree, there was a little metal rod I found in it. We finished our activity and that was the last activity of the day. We headed to the dinning hall where we ate our lunch or dinner. I couldn't tell what time of day it was because no one told us the time and the sky was foggy all the time. We ate pasta, pizza, and chicken fingers and we drank punch, water, milk, and orange juice. Before we ate, we were assigned tables. After eating, it was pitch black outside. All I could see is the light of the moon and dim faces of people vovered by the shadows of the trees. While outside, we had a so called challenge that we only could do in the dark. There was a large group of people with only one guide. He had a German accent which people made fun of. He gave us a life saver mint. Our so called challenge was to look at a person's mouth while they crunch on a life saver and see if there was a spark in their mouth. We also were allowed to eat it after finishing the so called challenge. When we did it, I didn't see anything happen to other people's mouths. A lot of people made a fuss of them seeing the flash and other people not seeing anything. After finishing the challenge, we went into a mass hall where we ate cookies and milk. We also were united with our friends who I haven't seen for hours. While in the mass hall, we saw animal heads hanging from the walls. The one I liked most was the giant brown moose head with beady black eyes. Whenever I looked in the moose's eyes, I could see them following me and other people felt the same thing. This was like the time I was in art class and I saw a painting of Mona Lisa which seemed to have her eyes following me as well. While we were there, a guy with a lot of metal cages and plastic boxes appeared. He was tall, muscular, and had a thin beard. He put on a show for us showing animals. We saw different species of snakes and he allowed us to touch them. While he was coming around, I touched the yellow python with white stripes on it. It shocked me that the python was smooth when I thought it would have been rough. A long time ago, I was allowed to touch a snake and it was all scaly and rough put the python didn't seem at all like the last snake I touched. After seeing the animal show, we ate our dinner and went to our cabins. We took a shower and went to our bunk beds. I laid in my black sleeping bag and couldn't go to sleep. I knew other people were having a hard time sleeping by hearing them talking, laughing, and flashing their disposable cameras. The bunk bed over me was owned by my friend Chundra. He kept snoring loudly and I couldn't help but laugh. He also had his arm hanging down so when I looked to my left, I could see his arm. People started laughing when I tried to put his hand in his bed and people started saying he's dead! But we were just kidding. When I woke up, I changed into my purple school shirt hoodie. We went to the dining hall and ate our breakfast. The first activity of the day was detecting the weather and measuring the fall of water. After the lousy activity, we got to the rock climbing wall. There were two walls of it that had rocks on. First, there was a slanting wall to help us easily get up. Second, was a flat wall. our group chose the flat wall. The wall was at least fifty feet and I was always up to a challenge. Before I was on the wall, I was harness and strapped for safety. While climbing the wall, it reminded me of when I rock climbed the wall in school. Instead of going up, my school had a rock climbing wall going left to right. When I was climbing, I stumbled a lot. There were yellow rocks in the chape of bananas that were loose that made my foot work off. Then I reached the top. When everyone finished rock climbing, we were in a shelter were we had an instructor telling us about surviving in the wild. Then we followed him into the woods where we had to do our activity. The challenge was to make a shelter using the knowlege of what the instructor told us earllier. We had two teams and who ever makes the best shelter wins. My team used a fallen tree as a base for the shelter then stacked logs on it. Then we covered it with lots of leaves and grass on it. In the end, it looked like a tent but made out of wood and a blue poncho coering it. Then my team eas declared the winner. After doing the activity, we demolished our shelter and scattered the pieces of wood so other teams would have trouble making the shelters. The last activity of Camp Bernie was to find creatures in the stream and capture them in our butter fly nets. We had to record what the creature is, what it did, and what it looked like. We saw many sa creatures on the list that the instructor gave us and scratched out what we saw on the card. The last thing we did at Camp Bernie was taking a group photo. Of course, I was upfront making my common peace sign with some others copying me. We went to our cabins, packed our bags, and put our luggage on the bus. Then we went in our bus to our assigned seats and drove away. This was my first ever two day field trip. Although this wasn't my favorite field trip, this was the one that taught me the most lessons. Sometimes it's not always bad that other people depend on you for everything, it's not always bad to be the smart one on a team, and it pays to be skinny and small. Also, I've heard that Camp Bernie won't be around that much anymore and I'm happy that I'm one of the lucky ones who were allowed to have this trip.
 * Authors note**