Week 3 - Just full out crazy!
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2009
1
4
6
Trip End
Jul 26, 2009
Honolulu,
Hawaii,
United States
Monday, June 22, 2009
WOW! What a week! The second week at camp went A LOT smoother than our first. The kids were all use to our routine and we are getting better and better at learning how to control them. On Monday we took the kids to the pool. Little Trevor decided to put on another exhibition for everyone to see so we are teaching him that pools are for swimming and locker rooms are for changing. On Tuesday we went to the Imaginarium, which is like a mini space museum connected to a big room where they can project the stars all around you. It was pretty lame but the star room was pretty cool. Either way it kept the kids entertained for a couple of hours. On Wednesday we went to the pool again and then we went to the Kailua Beach Park on Thursday (we spend a lot of time in the water as you can see). The Beach was SO pretty at Kailua. More of a white, fine, sandy beach and the waves were really big which made keeping track of the campers a lot more difficult
Waiting to launch
. One big mammoth of a wave would come along taking Andrea and I out and just SWAMP the kids. I was expecting them to come up just bawling but they would just bounce right back up laughing and smiling just to get creamed all over again. It definitely kept me entertained the whole time. Thursday night we had a staff BBQ despite it sprinkling on us most of the time. Made some grilled chicken which was really good but definitley wasn't the same as dad's. On Friday our fieldtrip was another day at the Marina for Boating Adventures. A lot of the other camps were there from the different sites so there were a lot of kids running around. Since my group is so young they can't ride all the boat stations so we had to fill in a lot of free time to keep them occupied. So I let them just wade in the water, which of course turned into them fully swimming in the only clothes they had for the day. It was really funny because the other camp's kids right beside us were all so well behaved waiting for their turn on the next boating station, while my bunch of hooligans were neck deep in water, throwing sand and running around. Hey, as long as they are having fun and all alive, it has been a successful field trip! Friday night we also learned that each camp site would be getting another Camp adventure staff member to help out with everyone being so burnt out already. They were just told as of Thursday and will be here to work this Tuesday already. So I am really excited to meet our new person! Friday night we went to the Country Bar which is on base
Getting geared up
. It was a totally blast! There weren't many people there so all of us Camp A people had a ton of fun making fools out of ourselves trying to learn how to line dance. Saturday was D-day for sky diving!!! It was INCREDIBLE- craziest thing I've probably ever done! Although the company we sky dove through were complete jerks, making us wait around for 3 hours before we jumped and charging us way more than we thought, it was an amazing experience! 13 of us Camp A staff decided to go and none of us had ever sky dived before so there were a lot of nervous first timers.
We met our diving buddies that we would be strapped on with right before heading out to the plane. My guy was named Dan. You could tell he was an adrenaline junky because he had done over a thousand jumps. He was really nice and kept joking around the whole time telling me if I got separated from him on the way down that the gate at the bottom was our meeting place, ah ha, ah ha…very funny. We did a few test run throughs and he told us we would have 60 seconds of freefall before he pulled the shoot and then we would have a good 3-5 minutes of gliding before we landed.
Three of us could go up together at a time so Suzanne and Karla went up with me along with our three camera men and diving buddies. The plane was really small inside with all 9 of us packed in it. The ride up was about 10-15 minutes and it was incredible how far up we were. I looked out the window and we were crazy high above the clouds! At the very top my diving guy, Dan, strapped me on, which was way awkward, and my life strapped to my back. I didn't start getting very nervous until I watched Suzanne, the first to jump, basically have to be pried off the sides of the door before she jumped
Sky Diving
. I was next in line and putting my heels on the very edge of the 5 inch wide metal ledge, I looked down 14,000 ft. beneath me, said a Hail Mary and took the plunge. AHH! The first 60 seconds of free fall was not as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. Picture yourself sticking your head out of a car window going a 120 mph with half as much oxygen as your use to and that’s basically what it felt like. I pretty much felt like a fish out of water and hyperventilated myself down those 60 seconds of free fall while trying to smile for the camera man in my face- pretty terrifying. The coolest part though was coming down through a cloud right before we pulled the shoot. It was like a complete white-out of mist and then POOF all the sudden it was clear skies. The jerk from the parachute wasn’t bad at all but the pressure change over that much altitude just absolutely KILLED my ears. Once we were gliding and I had pop my ears a little, the ride down was AMAZING! The view of the bright blue ocean of North Shore was so incredible, you could literally see over 40 miles to Waikiki, SOOO cool! Our landing was perfect and it was fun seeing Suzanne’s reaction when we got to the bottom. We were both like, OMG I can’t believe I just did that! Everyone was so wiped from the adrenaline rush we had all just experienced that almost all of us were sleeping on the van ride back
Me and Dan the parachute man
. This didn’t stop us from having even more fun that night though when a bunch of us decided to go down town Waikiki. A few of us went to Dukes, a famous restaurant right on Waikiki beach, for some appetizers to just relax and recover from the crazy day.On Sunday, one of my Camp A friends, Molly, hooked us up with one of her Hawaiian friends she worked with to take us jet skiing. The beach she took us to was called Sand Island Beach and it was in more of the industrial part of the island. There were dozens of jet skiers with their families grilling out and having a good time. It was mainly a locals’ beach so we stuck out like a sore thumb but everyone was really nice to us and offered us grilled steak and some great big sushi thing with Spam wrapped in it called "Spam Musubi," which was surprisingly, really good! Jet skiing on the ocean was a BLAST jumping the huge waves, and they had really, really nice 3 seater jet skies which made it even better. That night we went to a movie at the on-base theater to unwind from the weekend and it was only $3 so I’m going to really miss all these military benefits when I get back home. Next week won’t be as crazy but I’m sure I’ll have many more stories to tell. Until next week!
