Class Trip (30/73)

Jack continued to torment repeatedly at night as the weeks passed by. It was getting close to the end of the school year and soon it was going to be time for the camping trip that we had been planning in class. I was looking forward to the adventure of it. A night away at the lake sleeping under the stars. Mr. Lester was truly a great teacher. By making us plan out the trip we learnt a lot. We learned to work as a team. Even the kids that never really participated in class were even motivated by the project.

Finally, on a warm Friday in June, our class worked together as we loaded all of our supplies on to the mini bus. You could feel the excitement in the air as we took our seats to hit the road. We were headed to Wabamun Lake! I don’t remember anyone getting out of hand on the bus. Which was a good thing because Mr. Lester was driving the bus. He was the only chaperone. It would have been challenging for him to juggle driving if he would have had to deal with a misbehaving ten-year-old. I have to say we were a well behaved group of kids.

Once we arrived at our campsite we began to unload the bus. Once we were done Mr. Lester asked us to take the 4 tents we had brought and to lay them out on the red X’s he had placed around the site. Because there were 18 boys and only 5 girls the one rule was the boys tent was to be setup by Mr. Lester’s tent. The other 3 tents full of the girls were placed on the other side of the camp fire. It took us a while to get the tents set up. For some reason the boys were the last to get their tent up. The girls definitely one that race.

One of the groups in the class was assigned to time management. It was their job to make sure that we stayed on schedule. After lunch we had planned to go swimming in the lake. I was excited to going swimming, but I did not like the thought of wearing a bathing suit. I was a bigger girl compared to other girls in class. They were all thin. My bathing suits were always of the bargain basement variety. So I was embarrassed to wear them around the class. But there was no way around it.

Once I pushed through my fear of the way others viewed me I realized that nobody cared what each other looked like. We were a fortunate group of kids. A class of ten-year-olds that accepted each other just as we were. Flaws and all. We all splashed around in the shores of the lake, some in deeper than others. A group of students were also building a sand castle on the beach. It was one of those moments. A moment of true happiness, as I looked around at all of my class mates. It was moments like these that made me feel like a normal child.