On Wednesday, August 30, 2023, the DA 6th grade set off for a two night overnight trip. People had duffel bags, sleeping bags, and string bags (quite a lot of bags). As we climbed aboard the bus, I took one last look at the place that I didn’t call home, and never looked back (until two days later, of course). On the bus, I sat next to my friend. We played travel chess for a while (I played the 4 move checkmate and beat him in 4 moves). After a bit the bus person played a movie. It was titled: Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs! It was a (kind of) very interesting movie. The plot revolved around a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic. The main character was a crazy scientist guy who yadda yadda yadda yadda… anyways it doesn’t matter. The bus was super loud and it was a monkey house (only kind of literally).
When we got there, it was raining, which wasn’t great because my raincoat was in my duffel bag which was in the back of bus one, but I was in bus two. I grabbed a random duffel bag, and brought it to the pavilion, like everyone else. There we got assigned our cabins and our cabin proctor. We got our bags and headed towards our cabins, where we met our cabin mates. Most of them spent all of their free time playing Uno flip. Not just Uno, but Uno flip. WHHHYYYYYYYYYYY torture the great game uno with a rip off game that’s designed to make more money from what’s essentially the same thing???? It’s actually quite a good business plan. Anyways, after we got settled into our cabins, we went to eat lunch. It was a ham and cheese sandwich on a hamburger bun.
After that we did some activities. First, my activity group went to the pool for 2 hours. In that time frame everybody went crazy and acted psycho. After that, we did orienteering, or we spent an hour learning about compasses. Yeah. We did learn a cool trick about compasses where if you go a certain direction for ten steps, turn right 120 degrees and take another ten steps, and then turn right another 120 degrees and take ten steps. After all that you should be back where you started. After orienteering, everybody did team building. It was super fun. After activities, we had dinner, went back to our cabins for free time, and then everybody had the option of watching a movie or getting soaking wet playing dodgeball. I chose the movie because I didn’t want to get wet. The movie was The Lorax. In the movie there was this dude who had a yadda yadda yadda yadda… it doesn’t really matter.
Some of my favorite things there were the Kanga Jump, seeing their pig, Bubbles, playing Blackjack with some of my cabin mates, seeing some lizards and a giant spider that had a web outside it’s cabin, playing soccer, and hanging out with friends. The Kanga Jump was a blob-like thing that was essentially a trampoline. Mr. Robbins was one of my group proctors, and he was jumping super high and (accidentally) making everyone fall over. Bubbles was a mini potbelly pig, and she was super cute. Like, really cute. At soccer, we had three different games going, and the one that I was in used a yoga ball instead of a soccer ball. It was really fun to play with, and super easy to block, but it was really hard to handle.
Overall, the entire experience was great. I survived heavy rain and a hurricane, bonded with classmates and friends, had a lot of fun, and had some new experiences that I hadn’t had before. Going to Camp Kirkwood was a really great trip, and I would definitely go again.