Hallo everyone! Today I greet you in Norwegian. Now I have a massive apology (this is the massive apology I was talking about, in case you didn't already know :p) to make to you guys. I am so extremely sorry I haven't posted in so long, there's been a lot of drama at home the past couple of weeks and I've only just caught up on sleep from outward bound :p This leads me to the topic for today post, I'm going to give you a bit of an insight to what outward bound was like, day by day. But before I do I just want to say that outward bound has been one of the best and worst times of my life and I am so proud and happy that I have done and completed it, but I wouldn't have been able to do it without my bilu girls beside me the whole time. So here goes:
Day 1: Arrival!
- Once the 5-6 hour bus drive to our location was over we were driven to our first campsite. This is where we go the rundown of everything that was to happen in the following 9 days. We set up bivvys (what we would be sleeping in, but in other words a thin piece of material over our head) made spag bowl for dinner, washed up and went to sleep... on trees, literally.
Day 2: Hiking -.-
- We had to wake up at about 5:30, pack up bivvys, sleeping bags, backpacks and then make breakfast (muesli, milk powder, sugar and yoghurt! Yum! I'm not even being sarcastic!) Once that was down we had to ration out our food for the best two days evenly into our 10 backpacks, this was called supermarket. Once that was done and we had each collected four water bottles (equivalent 4L) the hike began. We walked approx 8km that day but had to stop 2km shorter than we'd liked because our water for the next day hadn't arrived, so that was to be our campsite for the night, and let me tell you, it was not pretty. It came to setting up out bivvys and once again, we were sleeping on trees, I'm not even exaggerating. There was kangaroo poo everywhere and to top it off, there were big orange stripy spiders everywhere you turned... I don't do spiders. That night was one of the hardest for me, I had a little bit of a breakdown because I am a complete scaredy cat and hate the bush and the dark, the spiders were just the icing on the cake. That night we had some sort of chicken bacon pasta with veggies and that night marks the first appearance of bush nurse! Otherwise know as the angel :p Bush nurse is basically a time when everyone can get their blistered painful feet out for Nuala (pronounced Noo-la) our instructor to bandaid and fix :p it was great I felt sorry for Nuala. That night I still didn't sleep and on top of the spiders, kangaroo poo, trees and rain, one of the girls in my bivvy vomited... so you could say the night went spewingly :p
Day 3: More hiking! :0
- Same old routine once again, wake up, pack up sleeping bag then pack backpacks, pack up bivvys and ration out food, eat muesli then start walking! Today was the day that we walked approx 17km so this was a pretty tough day. There were a lot of tears, and I have to admit some were shed by me, but it's not as easy as you think! You have a 20kg+ bag on your back, walking on rough, uneven ground in the heat non stop (only a couple of breaks for recess and lunch) for about 10 hours... yea it was pretty hard. But I think this was one of the things that brought our group that much closer and I am thankful to outward bound for this. Reaching the campsite was honestly the most amazing feeling! Everyone's feet were aching and pounding, blisters were popping and bags were dropping (that sounds pretty cool :p) The campsite was really pretty and the ground was flat! That night I think we had a freeze dried roast lamb with freeze dried mashed potato, and surprisingly this was my favourite meal of the trip! That night it was forecast to storm, but lucky for us it didn't!
Day 4: Once again, more hiking!
- Wake up at 5, pack sleeping bags, backpacks, bladibladiblah... Though today wasn't just a normal breakfast, we had piles upon piles of oranges that had been stored in our bags, and we had to cut them all up, and eat them all... We had so many oranges because they were so hard to eat while you were walking! So everyone ended up eating all the apples really quickly and being left with millions of oranges. It was annoying because I ended up having a piece of orange stuck in between my two front teeth for almost 3 days! When breakfast was finished, we started hiking again, about 15km today, and that dragged on for so long, if we put all our sweat from the whole day into a massive container it would probably end up filling one of those big water tanks :p Once again, getting to the campsite was a massive re-leaf... (get it? leaf hahahah :D) This campsite was really similar to the one the night before but they kept getting prettier and prettier! Our campsite this night was called Little Long Point and I think we all went a little crazy and hyperactive when we arrived, because there was a beach! Literally just down the hill from our site was the most beautiful beach, and we were allowed to take our shoes off... that's a big deal. Anyways that night was a really nice night spending it on the beach with the most amazing people :) That night we have bacon vege pasta again, and we were allowed to sleep in until 6:30 the next morning! :O
Day 5: You guessed it, more hiking!
- Yay! Sleep in until 6:30 that morning! More oranges, more packing, more muesli and on the road again, but first, an emu bob. This was something Nuala taught us. It was basically to make sure we didn't leave any rubbish behind but we all had to stand in a line, and slowly walk across the campsite whilst bobbing to look closer at the ground like an emu :p She even had a song for it:
"Eyes on the ground, looking all around if it ain't mother nature, pick up what you found!"I also forgot to tell you about Doug and Gene! The shovel and hand wash for the bombie (a bucket disguised as a toilet) Doug was a shovel (hahah) that whenever you went to the bombie, you would take the shovel with you. If the shovel wasn't there, you wouldn't dare walk any further because it meant someone was mid-number 2 :p Gene, was introduced to us and we had to say hi to her, "Hi Gene!" Say it out loud, and claps for those who got the joke :D Today was hiking but taken to a new level.. on a beach, through sand and over the top of sand dunes. It was hell. The only good part was whilst we were walking through a sand track a car drove past us and got bogged, so we did the nice thing and unbogged them, and they had a dog! He was so cute! It was great to socialise and actually see other people after 5 days. After we had to decline their offer of soft drink, money, fruit cake, or a bar of soap, we said goodbye and kept on trecking.
Once we arrived at our campsite, we started cutting up lunch and then out of nowhere the couple who's car got bogged came and found us! They apparently followed our footprints for half an hour to find us just to say thankyou and give us all a hug because he "wouldn't have been able to sleep at night if he didn't say thankyou" it was a little creepy at first but actually really sweet. They gave us licorice as well which Nuala wouldn't let us eat until the last day :( That afternoon we had to participate in solo time. Solo time is where we all get separated in the bush and spend 8 hours alone to reflect. I was scared at first but surprisingly it went really fast! That nights campsite wasn't too good but definitely better than the first two nights!
So that's half of my crazy adventure called outward bound, stay tuned for the last 4 days and talk to you guys soon!
I'm not sure if you would know this by now but dance is pretty much my whole life. I've danced since I was 2 and I love it so much. Today, I got to dance and support kids with cancer at the same time, and it was amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch? <-- If you follow this link you can watch how the whole thing went down. The whole thing was filmed and we were on channel 9 that night! Afterwards I have Ben and Jerry's ice cream for the first time and it was heaven! Then went and got some lunch and took the train home. Throughout the whole morning though the city was surrounded with people in bright yellow shirts and it was great to see just how many people gave up their Sunday's to come and support such an amazing cause. There were little tiny tots and even a few people from the older generation came to dance! It felt great afterwards knowing I was able to support children with cancer and help the leukaemia foundation, so please, consider doing the same :)
