Day 5- 100 Degrees F

7-21-10

Day Five

In the morning, we split back up into our “camel, goat, and llama” groups for a debriefing. They led us to nice, air conditioned rooms after giving us “payment” for our chores, an orange or an apple. They were much appreciated. The rooms were a welcome relief after a night of sleeping in the Arkansas heat. We talked about population and spending distribution throughout the world. We found it interesting that North America has 5% of the world’s population, and yet we do 32% of the world’s spending, whereas Asia spends 25% with 60% of the population.  We learned this by distributing ourselves across a huge canvas map by estimating where the most people lived. After the session wrapped up, we walked back to our lodge. Let’s just say that we all learned the true value of a shower and air conditioning. When free time was over, we all went up to lunch. It was probably the most appreciated roast beef and mashed potatoes of our lives. We played some cards with our friends from Ohio for a while, and then it was time for high challenge. At high challenge, we broke into two groups. Jordan and Alex were in a group with some Ohio kids, and Megan, Anna, Bennett, Christian, and Gabe were in another group with some Ohio kids. The two challenges were the large and intimidating “big swing”, and the rock wall. The big swing was a large piece of cable, suspended between two tall trees. We put on large harnesses, and were then hooked to the cable, hoisted into the air, dropped from a height, and swung through the air for a few minutes. Jordan took his turn on the big swing and decided to make it more interesting by flipping upside down. When Alex went, she began saying “oh no” with a deeply Minnesotan accent, and let out the largest scream of that group.. Afterwards, Alex received a speech lesson from some “Ohioans” as it is correctly said. This group then went over to try their hand at the rock wall. Jordan became the first person that our director had ever seen scale the challenge wall blindfolded, while Alex scaled the intermediate wall blindfolded. In the other group with Gabe, Kristian, Anna, Megan, Erin, and Bennett, the extreme swing was quite the activity. Erin enjoyed rocking the ninja warrior poses as she swung through the air. Kristian got the laughs when he began belting any song with the word 'flying' that came to his mind as he soared through the air. Megan, as terrified as she was, managed to wake all the forest creatures as she pierced the suspenseful silence with possibly the loudest scream ever heard (which we fortunately took a video of to show everyone :p). Shortly after, Megan was attacked by a swarm of hornets and stung twice on her leg at the same time :( (which is still as swollen as a few watermelons).  As she walked back early due to her injuries, she was very devastated that she could no longer say she's never been stung. Our group returned to our lodge for another couple hours of watching iCarly and Wayne’s world, showering, and playing cards. It was an eventful afternoon. We all headed up for another delicious meal. After dinner, our friends left to get ice cream, while we stayed behind and played an intense game of foursquare of which Mike would not allow ANY nonsense (little did we know he went to the Foursquare nationals in elementary school). In other words, we were up against the best. We then returned to the lodge and many of us took yet another shower. The group finished Wayne’s world, visited, and retreated to our comfortable beds for a much-needed sleep after a busy and exhausting day.