Over the first week of April, my classmates and I went on an adventure to the far off lands of Becket, Massachusetts. We all had different visions of how everything would play out, and I personally thought that NC (an abbreviation for Nature’s Classroom) would be more outdoorsy than it was. I thought that we would be spending pretty much the whole time outside, but we had ½ hour to 1 hour breaks between our classes, and our classes were mostly inside. The journey there was one of the best, and we got to watch movies on the big coach bus and talk with friends. The 7th graders who had already done it last year told us rumors like ghosts that people believed, and that freaked some people out but excited others, like me.

 

After the long journey, we had to stand out in the cold for a long time and play a game in the snow (great time to wear my sneakers, eh?) and we were assigned bunk rooms after that in our grand cabin. Shortly after that, we had our first mealtime where a lot of things were introduced to us, including how our classes and field groups would be working out. It didn’t make so much sense to me. We were introduced to waitronning. Then we did a team building activity after dinner, a “quest”. That night, someone was shining their flashlight a lot and kept everybody up until like 11:00. The next morning was my one and only waitron* shift. That day we were supposed to do an Oregon Trail simulation in real life, where we pretended we were a wagon of people and we were going to Oregon, facing obstacles along our way**. I wasn’t really listening, and I regretted that later because I didn’t know what we were doing for a bit. Sadly, that happened the next day. We had 3 classes where we learned about meditating, rockets, and forest fires in hands-on ways. That night we got to sleep well after our quiet sing along session where we sang some of my favorite songs, such as Riptide and Woody.

 

The morning after that, we woke up and had a field group*** outing, and rehearsed a play for Wednesday Night Live****. Then we had lunch, and right after we started away on the trail to Oregon City. We portrayed the farmers, the poorest of the groups, and we ended up all freezing to death the stop before Oregon City. We were very mad, but we had fun so we got over it. Later, we had one more class. It was how to eat healthy and live forever by not eating preservatives. We made mini treats for that, and they were fun and yummy. Soon after dinner came Wednesday Night Live, a series of mini plays where each field group performs a skit and that’s what we were planning out before. I ended up getting my shoe thrown across the room by a staff member, but that was fine. Our play was about making a commercial and all the attempts. At the very end when we got it perfect, the cameraman said he wasn’t filming. That was the punchline. We went to sleep for our last night before the day we headed home

 

In the morning, we had a last field group meeting where we recieved beads of kindness (called IALAC beads*****) We then played a game called Predators vs Prey. I started out as a centipede, the lowest in the food chain, but as I was eaten I ended up becoming a snake, or whatever ate me. That game wasn’t super fun, but it was semi-enjoyable. Then we had to pack up and go home.

 

*Just so you know, a waitron is like a waiter who helps clear the tables and set them and stuff

**More information coming

***Field group is sort of our group for hikes and stuff

****Which will be explained later

*****Stands for: I am loving and caring, Individuals all learning as [a] community, and other things