I thought that the school camp was great! I had things that I really liked, and things that I didn’t really like. Here is a few things that I really enjoyed:

Mountain Biking

Group cooking

Canoeing

Sleeping in a tent

Sleeping at the Yamano hotel

Practicing, and performing our skit

And many many more…

I also thought that I used the learner profile. Here is how I think I used them:

I used COMMUNICATOR when I was communicating with my canoeing group.

I used RISK-TAKER when I did my rock-climbing.

I used THINKER when I thought what was the best way to perform part of our skit.

I used KNOWLEDGEABLE when I knew how to use a compass in orienteering.

I think that using the learner profile is a very important thing.

I think that I learned a lot of new skills on the camp. Here are a few things:

How to move fast in canoeing

How to use the gears well on a mountain bike.

How to set up a tent well.

Overall, I thought camp was a great experience.

Thanks,

George Wood

22nd of October 2010

I had to get up early today. We had to pack our suitcases, and load them onto the buses. We would be leaving Hakuba at around noon.

We had breakfast at 7:00am. Harrison in 6th grade gave the Yamano Hotel staff a thank you present. Group A would be going to Omachi climbing wall, and group B would be doing a lake clean-up. I was doing the lake clean-up.

After breakfast, we went back to our rooms to make sure we had not forgotten anything. I found someone’s smelly socks in the rubbish bin.

We left the hotel at around 9:00am for the lake clean-up. We arrived, and we were given lots of plastic bags. We set to work right away. Surprisingly, we found quite a lot of rubbish, including several McDonalds chip bags. Some still had moldy chips inside. The girls weren’t keen to pick it up and put it into the plastic bags. I did it instead. Not pleasant.

We got some free time on the beach area to have some play time. Ken Onda was pretending to be a Homo Erectus. He was banging rocks together. The rocks actually broke in half!

After about 30 minutes, we returned back to our bus. The bus would take us to the Omachi wall so then we could link up with the other bus. We arrived at around 11:30am. The people at the climbing wall were just about to pack up. The 2 dogs that we went hiking with were there as well. Everyone was forced to go the toilet because we wouldn’t be having many stops on the long bus ride.

We all went onto the buses that we came on 4 days earlier. We were given bento boxes by some people who were friends of the evergreen staff. We would be eating them on the bus. The instructors had all come to say goodbye to us.

We left the Omachi wall at noon. We drove past the Yamano Hotel. The staff at the hotel waved us goodbye. I havn’t got much to tell you about the bus ride, since I fell asleep. The only thing I did was, that I ate my bento box.

When I woke up, I saw city lights! 15 minutes later, the bus doors opened. I looked outside, and I saw YIS!

So, now I have finished telling you the great story of my YIS grade 6 camp.

Thanks,

George

21 of November 2010

I woke up early this morning because my roommates were listening to thier iPod Touch. The music was on full volume. I went downstairs to join them. We practiced our skit, because we would be perfoming it tonight.

At 7:30am, we had breakfast. A boy sitting on the same table as us, was putting sugar in his water! I tried some tea. I didn’t put any sugar in, so it was extremly bitter. I wasn’t in the best of moods today, because we would be doing the 8 hr hike. We all had our breakfast quickly.

The bus for the hike startpoint left the hotel at 9:00am. We arrived at around 9:30am. We did some stretching, and the instructors gave us some tips for the hike. We started the hike a little while later, and we had some animals to greet us. They were 2 lovely dogs. Their names were Teddy and Sky. I got to walk Teddy up the hiking track for 10 minutes. The only proplem was, that Teddy kept pulling me on his leesh. But I still had lots of fun doing it.

It was quite a difficult walk. I was walking at the front, since I was one of the fittest people there. We stooped several times. I was huffing and puffing most of the way there. My blisters on my foot were puffing up in size, as much as I was puffing from dehygration.

The thing that kept me going to the end was, the Indian curry lunch we would be eating at the top. I finally made it to the top without any accidents.

The Indian curry was delicious. I immediatly went back for seconds. We also had cake for dessert. After eating, we practiced our skit. A few people came to watch us practice. The skit coming along well.

Coming down the mountain was 100 times easier as coming up. There were no uphills at all, and we were down at the bottom in an hour. The shuttles were there to pick us up. We arrived back at the hotel at around 4:00pm. I had an onsen, and I did my diary. We also practiced our skit. We would be peforming in a few hours time!

At 6:00pm, we had dinner. I couldn’t eat much because I was way to excited about performing our skit. I noticed other people feeling the same. I couldn’t even eat much dessert!

We had to leave the dining room after dinner because the adults would be moving the chairs to a different place becauspart of the dining room would be the stage. My roomates and I went back to our room. We practiced a last time just to be sure our skit was perfect. I would be acting an old man

Skit time! Everybody was looking forward to our skit a lot because in our group we had a boy called Daniel. He was really good at acting and making people laugh. The dining room looked very different now. The seats were lined up next to each other. There was an empty space at the front for the stage. The evergreen instructors had come to be our judge. We chose to be the 5th group to perform out of 10 groups.

The skits were very funny. All the skits had to contain the ‘main idea’ the teachers had chosen. The idea was to have foam in the skit because at the camsite where we stayed, you flushed the toiltes by using foam.

Our turn soon came. I was offstage for the first bit. Everybody in the shit was laughing like mad. Even the teachers! We I came on stage, I found it difficult to act when everybody was laughing so hard. I died of a heart attack in the story. Our skit lasted for about 7 minutes. Everybody cheered like crazy at the end. The instructors even had their own skit which was very funny as well. This is our group performing.

The 10 skits were soon all finished. The instructors had finished judging. Guess what? Our group got first prize. The instructors had bought some snacks with them. We got to eat first.

After we had finished snacking, we had a big surprise. the instructors were going to play a game which was like a quizshow. It was similar to jeoperdy. In our groups, we chose questions. Each Q had a certain amount of points. If got the Q right, we would get the points. If we were incorrect, we would get the points minused. Our team at the end got a all right score. We weren’t first. After the game, it time to get ready for bed.

I lay in bed feeling happy. Our skit had been a huge succsess.

I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

Thanks,

George Wood

20th of October 2010.

I have finally had a decent sleep. I didn’t wake up during the night. I first woke up at 6:30am. My roommates and I watched TV until 7:00am. We got up for breakfast. Breakfast was just as delicious as the dinner the night before. We had to eat breakfast really fast because our next activity would start at 9:00am. We had to go on a walk to get there. The thing I was looking forward to was, making yaki-soba in groups, and also doing the hot-air balloon at night. The whether was perfect for this. Here is a picture of where they had the 1998 winter olympics.

We walked on footpaths the whole way to the activity place. The activity was called: Games activities. We arrived at a big field. On one side of the field was bush. On the other, was a river that went a long way according to the instructors. We could also see Nagano’s 3 famous mountains in the distance.

We were divided into groups, and there 4 games. The groups would rotate so then we could do every activity. The point of doing games was to improve our co-operation. Our group struggled with this simple exercise. The activities were fun, but only if you co-operated. So, our group didn’t find it fun at all. At 11:15, we finished, and then we had free time running around. The adults however, were very hard at work, and were preparing for lunch.

At 12:00pm, we all made our way to the lunch picnic area. The BBQ’s were lit, and we started to make our food. I was super dooper hungry. We cooked the food in groups. I was in charge of the vegetables, and some other people were in charge of the meat. The food was finally cooked. Delicious smells were coming from the food. I got a fork, and I started eating straight away. It was so nice that I had forth helpings.

Straight after lunch, group A went to do a river clean up, and group B which I was in, went to rock-climbing. The bus ride took about 30 minutes. We arrived at the Omachi climbing wall at 2:30pm.

The hardest thing about rock-climbing, is when you come down. You have to lean back on the rope, and trust the intructors at on the ground helping. Leaning back, and trusting a thin piece of rope is quite hard. If the instuctors accidently let go of the rope, I would come down very quickly. The footpath would turn red quickly as well.

I managed to climb up 3 climbing walls. We left at around 4:10pm.

Once we arrived bach at the hotel, we had free time for 30 minutes. Dinner was served earlier tonight, because we would be going on hot-air ballooing.

Everyone was so excited about this, that all the children ate their dinner super quickly. For desert, we had tiramisu.

We had 10 minutes to get ready. We all ran outside, and ran to where the hot-air balloon was floating.

When we saw it, we were all stunned. It was enormous. We all lined up in que. Everyone was pushing and shoving, and everybody wanted to ride the balloon first. I however, was calm, and I did not push or punch anyone. The teachers noticed this, so I went up with the first group of children.Hot-Air Balloon video.

When I got on, I was a bit afraid. Not because I was scared of heights, but because, about 5 inches above my head, was a huge metal thing, that produced a gigantic burst of fire and gas. We finally took off into the cold night sky. The view was magnificent. The fire nearly caught fire of someone’s hair, but luckily it didn’t. We stayed up for about 7 minutes. We came down slowly. When we got off we had to be careful. On the hot-air balloon, there had to be a certain amount of weight to keep it down. So, when one person got off the balloon, another person got on. We did this until our group had got off, and the next group had got on.

The hot-air balloon continued to go up and down several times. The sight of it was just incredible.

At last, everybody had gone on the hot-air balloon. We walked back to the hotel, still feeling very excited.

When my roommates and I got to our room, it was nearly our bedtime. I had another early night. I was sound asleep by 9:30pm.

Thanks,

George

19th of October 2010

I woke up this morning feeling very cold indeed. I checked my watch. It was 12:01am! I wasn’t surprised when the 4 other kids sleeping in the tent were awake as well. They were shivering all over! Since there was nothing to do, and we were wide awake, Michael Seine entertained us by telling us scary stories. I could hear noises from other people’s tents, which meant that they were having drafts in their tent. Michael told us scary stories until 3:00am. We also did some brainstorming for our skit that we would perform on Thursday. Every group had to perform a skit. We then tried to get more sleep, but we had absolutely no sucsess. At 5:00am, the camp, including the adults were awake. The adults were very angry at us, because were making very loud noises at an early time.

At 7:00am, we woke up, and we put our sleeping bags away, since we would be staying at the Yamano Hotel for the rest of the duration of camp. For breakfast, we had French Bread with white bread and museli or fruit salad. We were divided into two groups. Group A and group B. I was in group B. B would be doing canoeing, while A would be doing mountain biking. After breakfast, we had a little bit of free time.

At 9:00am, we started canoeing. We went into groups of 3. I was with Ken Onda, and Aiki Nakamura. I thought that the canoeing would be quite easy, but it was very had, because the groups had to co-operate when they had to turn left or right. If you saw our group, you would have said that our group had ZERO CO-OPERATION. When we tried to turn, we would turn the other way, or 1 person would row too hard. Our boat nearly did tip over when we hit another person’s boat. Another groups boat did tip over when we had a canoeing race.  The canoeing lasted for about 2 hours. The canoeing definitely made my arms sore! At the end, I felt like my arm was going to fall off. I was very wet when I finished the activity. I got changed into warm, dry clothes.

At 12:45pm, we had lunch. For lunch, we had birritos. It was yummy. I sat next to my roomates.

After lunch, I got ready for my second activity: Mountain Biking. We were fitted into helmets, and the instructors gave us bikes. The mountain biking activity was split into 2 groups. 1 for good bike riders, and group 2 for beginner bike riders. I went with the advanced bike riders. We rode fairly quickly. We rode on roads and dirt trails that went in the forest. We stopped at a stream to have a break. The stream water was so nice. It was also icy cold! After our quick break, we rode on a very steep uphill road. It lasted for 15 minutes. My legs were numb after we had finished.

I arrived at the campsite at around 4:00pm. I was so tired that I had forgotten that we would be going to leaving the campsite! We would go on a shuttle bus to the Yamano Hotel.

The bus ride took 20 minutes. I looked out the window to try and spot the hotel fro inside the shuttle bus. Finally, we arrived, and we got our suitcases, and went into our room. I was the leader of our room, so I was in charge of  looking after the key. We had a long free time. We watched some TV, and we practiced our skit.

At around 6:00pm, we had dinner. It was absolutely delicious! We first had a huge portion of fried fish and vegetables. I was full up after that. Little did I know that that was only the first course! We even had desert.

After I finished dinner, did my diary, and I had a onsen. It was lovely and warm, and very relaxing. I put on my PJ’s after the bath. I then went to my room, and got ready for bed. I was so tired from mountain biking, that I went to sleep at 9:00pm. Most people went to bed at 10:00pm.

Thanks,

George