Day 5: Rainy Day, Amazing Night

Day five was the first day of rain and cold weather. The third project started, and luckily I had some free time off while the students had group education on Teamwork and Communication. I had done laundry the day before, and although most of my stuff had dried the same day, I left some stuff overnight outside and it was damp once again. Laundry is such a pain in the butt. I have to do it every 2-3 days because if I don’t I end up with a pile of socks and underwear and t-shirts that could take me hours to wash in the sink. I take my clothes to the bathroom, with the magic soap bar, and dip the clothes in the water and rub the soap on them. I don’t really know what I’m doing, so I kind of just squeeze the clothes and make the water bubble and then drain it and rinse the clothes and wring them out. It’s quite primitive and I feel very rural whenever I have to do laundry.
The third project was going very well. During the afternoon break, our planned water fight was clearly not going to happen, and I think the entire camp went to sleep. They had more time to work on the project, and this is where my beloved Red Team encountered their first major problem. Jana has a problem with the team and doesn’t feel like she’s a part of the team. She feels that the team gravitates towards Marika whenever they have something to solve or ideas to decide. The rest of the group feels that Jane is missing for a lot of vital conversations, like when they brainstorm or are working on the project. She is constantly late. We tried to explain the need to communicate during the second part of the project, but at the end of the day, we realized the team was falling apart and something needed to be done.
For the night activity, Ekta and I created the Amazing Race Challenge. It was AWESOME! We set up eight stations:
1. Pucker Up: Each team has one stick of lipstick. One at a time, they need to put the lipstick on and kiss a poster and fill the space with kiss marks. The pictures were of an elephant’s butt, a pair of underwear, a pig’s face and other things. It was really funny.
2. Puzzle: Each team had to complete a puzzle of a starfish type thing. It was an easy challenge, so we’re going to change it.
3. Mint-Chopstick: Each team has to put a chopstick in their mouth and transfer, without using their hands, from one end to the other, a lifesaver mint. The first person has to get the mint out of the bucket with the chopstick and they pass it one by one down the line. The challenge required three mints to be transferred. It was funny to watch them become flustered and frustrated with each other but eventually they got the hang of it and were able to complete the task.
4. Sponges: This task required the teams to transfer water from one bucket to a cup using sponges. Three people were near the bucket with water, the other two were near the cup. They ran in the middle, squished water out of the sponges and transferred it to the cup. Simple, but harder than it looks.
5. Watermelon Roadblock: For this task, the clue to the next task was hidden in a cube of watermelon. The problem was that we cut up three watermelons, and there were at least 100+ cubes of watermelon to search through to find the clue. Blue team was first, then Green, and red and yellow were stuck rummaging through the watermelon to find the clue. Eventually I found the clue for the red team and you’ll never believe what happened. Next thing I know, I am being tackled by Frank (a tall guy on the yellow team) and everyone rushed over to dog pile on us. I was laughing so hard, and would not let go of the clue. Eventually, the red team helped me free and I gave them the clue and they were off. Jenny found the next clue for the yellow team soon after and the yellow team followed.
6. Balance beam: the team had to go one by one along a balance beam, which was actually the most challenging of the tasks. There was a problem with the rules when they were read and Jolin confused them by saying only one team can go at a time. It was supposed to be one person at a time, no matter what team, but everyone had to cross. There were some angry words exchanged, but eventually everyone made it past.
7. Human Statue: This task required the team to create a statue of something (ie horse) but we put requirements for what body parts can touch the floor (ie 2 legs, 2 hands, 1 butt, etc). Some teams did this easily, and others were stuck figuring out how to get four people to look like the object with certain body parts on or off the ground.
8. Word Scramble: This was the last leg of the race, but it wasn’t over yet. Each team had to run to the volleyball nets, one at a time, and retrieve bags of puzzle pieces. When they had all the bags, they could begin the puzzle which spelled out the clue to their next task. The clue read, “Go to the finish line.” Ekta and I didn’t realize until the task, just how many English words you can make with these 17 letters, but eventually they figured it out.
9. The finish line: The only clue we gave them to the finish line was, “Find the Jesus, a place where Catholics can pray at camp.” This was referring to the crucifix statue that was located in one of the far corners of camp. Some teams may have seen it during capture the flag, but most of the teams didn’t know where it was.
The blue team ended up winning the amazing race, followed by the green. The red and yellow were in a heated race for the finish line. The red team was ahead after the balance beam, because the yellow team couldn’t get over quickly. But the red team was held up by the puzzle and they finished barely before the yellow team. The best part was that neither red nor yellow knew where the finish line was exactly. The yellow team was very close to finding it, right at the corner of the building it was behind, but they turned away and in the end, the red team found the crucifix as the yellow team ran away from it! The Amazing Race was definitely the most epic night game of the camp and many of the students were quite irritated with the watermelon challenge (my idea). Actually, there were rumors that someone got sick and vomited during the wrestling match after eating so much watermelon, and although I didn’t see anything during clean up, I decided to wash the clothes I was wearing that night, just in case.