I'm A Survivor

I would like to take a minute to explain the last week, sparing no details, non-glorified and strictly true to the point of nausea. This is purely for selfish reasons. I need to have somewhere to referrence next year when I am once again pinned down and forced to make a choice. Go and die or stay home and croak. Hard to choose, isn't it!

Since I am a pessimistic person, we will start with the CONS of Girls camp (in no particular order....)
1. FINDING CAMP - Who in their right mind would find it fun to hike up a steep inclining mountain with all their gear in their hands? Not me. I am not a boy scout and there are good reasons for that!

2. BAGS - Being that I am a lady and once again, not a boy scout, I pack anticipating everything bad that could happen, will happen. I brought the least amount of baggage in camp and that consisted of a duffel bag, blanket, pillow, sleeping bag and backpack. If I knew that I would have had to backpack through China to find camp, I probably would have brought the clothes on my back and maybe some insulin.

3. LATRINE DUTY - You are telling me that even though this is called camping, we still have to take turns sanitizing the toilets, disinfecting the showers, emptying the stall garbages and removing all hard water deposits from the sinks? WHAT? Don't they have a relief society service project out there who could do this for us? Don't they have a camp host that follows you around with a hose? We ended up on Latrine Duty 3X in three days. Which in turn meant that I spent a good majority of the time, nagging the adults of tomorrow to keep scrubbing. NICE!

4. LIONS & TIGERS & BEARS, OH MY! - This was the opening speech this year when we got into camp..... "There have been three bear sightings in the area by other wards. We have caught two of them and they have been disposed of (DISPOSED? I thought that was something you did with old tablecloths, not bears.). There is still one out there which means there will be no deoderant, lotion, hairspray, bug spray, food or other scents in your campsite. Have fun and always flush the toilets for five seconds, do not flush tampons or pads and please only use three squares to wipe." Can you see why camp was not so appealing from the get go?

5. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD - Our poor camp director had a bout with sleepwalking the first night we were there. After losing her in the wooded forest and relocating her, we grabbed a hold and watched as she physically punched her poor husband over and over. We held her down in a camp chair to prevent her from taking flight again and ended up getting no sleep what-so-ever.

6. EARLY TO BED, EARLY TO RISE, MAKES A MAN HEALTHY, WEALTHY AND WISE - False. If it made me wise, it is only because it helped me decide to never come back again! 5:00 comes early when you have been ransacking the forest all night on a treasure hunt for the camp director!

7. CERTIFICATION - Why in the world do you need to certify at camp? I think that all of the great knowledge of knots and first aid would have taught us a lot more, if it hadn't of been infused into our heads in 100 degree heat. Call me crazy, but I am under the impression that you could get that all accomplished before you and the whole ward head out into the great outdoors.

8. WALK OF TORUTRE - You can always tell when a woman was not present to help in designing. Take the campground for example. The stake camp and ampitheater were at the bottom of an incredibly steep mountain slope. The ward camps were at the top. We had to hike that lame hill around 4x a day. My shins ached, my butt was sore and my sideache pierced thourgh me like fire. So, I am out of shape, I get it. Now fix it or us old ladies are going to boycott!

9. LACK OF SLEEP - I blame this entirely on the lack of sleep, however, one morning while the annoying bagpipes were ringing in my ear (who wakes up to those anymore anyway?), I realized that a key piece of clothing was missing from my wardrobe. MY. PANTS. Being the thoughtless person that I am, I yelled "Where are my pants and who invited my husband?" Darrel was not at camp. The whole lot of young women from the ward were though and close enough in proximity to hear and make me the "butt" of all jokes for the rest of the week. Don't worry, I found them. They were nicely tucked under the air mattress.

There may or may not be more, but we will leave it at that. I did however enjoy getting to know all the young women in the ward, the newly formed presidency and all the stake leaders. I enjoyed the stake fireside. (Misty, if you read this, your mom made me bawl on hers!) It was so neat to listen to people from the scriptures who got to meet Christ and tell us of their experiences. I absolutely would not trade the world for the time us leaders spent in the tent, late at night, giggling from lack of sleep. Gaming around the dinner table at off hours during the down times was pure fun and brought back many memories of cups at the clogging competitions and spoons at young womens in my home ward.

I can now say that I am a survivor of Girls Camp. I am not sure if I will say it often, but be aware, I did it. The world is mine to conquer!