The Camp Squeah Experience (day 1)

 Hello everyone. 

I went on a 3 days camping trip at Camp Squeah with my class. Camp Squeah is a camping place 177 km north-east of Vancouver, it took 2 hours of driving to get there and it was a long trip but the view made up for it. Then there's my friend. There were an estimate total of 60 loud and energetic children on the bus so it was very loud and make it hard to concentrate on anything at all. I also consumed a sandwich every time the bus passed by a scene worth admiring. In total I consumed 2 sandwich because there were only 2 in the bag.

When we arrived at camp, it was approximately 11:30 so everyone was hungry. They fed us a grilled cheese sandwiches and tomatoes soup. Then everyone went into the main lodge and the camp director, pretty sure his name was Nick, showed us how the camp works. Here's the breakdown: There's an inaccessible pool, a playground, cabins, a haunted church, a gym, an archery range a bathroom, activity courses and a field. Just to name a few.

This very official map shows where everything are:

Order from left to right starting on top: Archery, Gym, Field, Playground,

Cabins, Main lodge, Scary haunted church.

Then we are all assigned a cabin, each cabin has a unique tree name, like Fir, Birch, Alder, Cedar. My cabin was Dogwood (which in my opinion is the laughable name out of them all). How it's all going to work is everyday after a meal we get 1 hour free time. Then we'll do the activities the grown ups has planned out. Today was the first day, our first activity was soap carving. Now you might be thinking, or not, "how can you possibly carve a piece of soap?" To be honest, I don't know either. They called it soapstone but it's more like just a normal piece of stone. And to add to it, it's as small as a piece of grape and we were supposed to be CREATIVE??? What did you expect us to make? The thinker by Auguste Rodin? No way. Plus the tools are very much blunt, I bet you can't even cut a lemon properly with those tools, of course you can't cut a lemon because you need a knife not tools use for carving. 

Then we got to every "favorite" part. Team building. Let me just say that we are horrible at team building with or without guidance. But, it went pretty well. The first activities went something like this: you do a thumbs up and stick out your indexes, then the guy leading the activities will put a stick that was, presumably, filled with helium. Our goal was to lower the helium stick down, using our indexes. You can't for any reason take your finger away from the stick. It took us 4 tries to lower it down. It was very stressful. Trust plays a major role in some of these activities (foreshadowing). No one knows who's lifting and who's releasing. You just have to trust. But we got it. Then it's time for river crossing. Imagine Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, then remove the chance of dying and replace the chocolate river with sand, and then remove the factory entirely and add some ropes that resemble both banks of the river and finally put Camp Squeah in there. You get 5 frisbee and everyone have to go all the way from the river mouth to where the river ends. But, the frisbee has to have a foot on it at all time. Even for one second without a foot on it, it's gone forever. The prize at the end? Hot chocolate. I stayed till the end and got the prize. Worth it. 

Then we went for dinner. I don't exactly remember what they served us but it was great. Then we played a game, Sardine. Rules are: 1 person hides, 64 (in our case) people go find them, if one manages to find the hider then they shall hide with them too, no hiding in buildings, under buildings or outside the camp boundaries, aka the woods. It got dark very quick and that's where it got a little creepy. 

See, there are staff members who lived near the camp and they got children. And those children lived there their entire life. And they knows how to tell scary stories at the worst time possible. There was apparently a church, or chapel, and it was "haunted". No one knows for sure but no one wants to check. We used our flashlight and combine it with a sunglasses and you get a real life horror movie, where you are in danger. So naturally, I put my sunglasses on, activate my flashlight and went to the church. You have to be cautious every turn and every noise you heard is scary because aside from possible ghost, there are also wildlife and bear is among them. So I went there, stood for what seems like hours but actually 2 minutes and bolted out of there faster than people going for Black Friday sales.

Very accurate illustration of what the forest looks like

Me and my friend bribed a kid to help us out because he knows how to play hide and seek and he lived there his whole life so shout out to Fletcher for attempting to help us. No one found the hider because she was hiding in the wood. Which was against the rules. Funny thing is, one of my friend actually walked right past her without noticing, he even looked right at her. He is now legally blind.

Then one of our teacher hid and we go find her. Though with the experience we had earlier, no one found her even though she was hiding in the most obvious spot known to man. In the playground. And the playground is in the middle of the camp. Then we went to bed, I was expecting to get 3 - 5 hours of sleep but got 7. My cabinmate won't stop talking till maybe 11:30 pm, or at least I thought was what happened because I just passed out. During the night, there was noise behind our cabin. Our cabin's behind window outlook the forest. Let me just say that the noise does not sound human-like whatsoever. That was our entire day from start to finish, it was tiring and definitely fun.

This is part 1 of 3 of the stories. Also sincerely apologize for any grammar mistakes.