Practice Exam

What do you think of when I say "Practice Exam"? ...I'll bet words like "backpacking, tent, stove, compass, campfire" probably weren't some of the first ones to pop into your mind!

This Wednesday night we had a "practice exam" in my outdoor ed class. You see, our final exam is a 5-day expedition that includes backpacking, snow caving, rock climbing, and whitewater kayaking. So its only logical that a practice exam would be an overnight backpacking camp, right? Right.

Our class is quite small (14 guys, when everybody shows up), and a big part of having fun with our activities was getting to know all the interesting characters in my class.

 

Meet Flynn and Phil...

 

 Cam and Roy (Yes, Cam is hiking in the knee-high school socks and gumboots, and Roy is holding a knife. Apparently he lost the sheath...)

 

 Koki (he's a Japanese exchange student, and I'm pretty sure he'd never been outside a big city in his life before this)...

...and Josh and George. These were my two crazy tent mates, and oh boy have we had some adventures.

It started with an extensive gear check during lunch,

Then we drove 30 minutes up out of the city and into the National Park.

We only hiked about 45 minutes into our campsite, but the trail was pretty exciting :D

When we got there, we set up camp, then explored the river and found a good place for a fire.

 

Once it started getting dark we cooked ourselves a delicious dinner of pasta, cheese sauce, sausages and rolls.

We then lit a nice fire and proceeded to "roast marshmallows", except that New Zealand marshmallows are posh little pink things covered in powdered sugar, and they don't roast very well :P

The next morning started bright and early, eating breakfast and hiking out in the dark, cause we had to be back to school for first period.

 

We came out of the forest to a beautiful sunrise.

Staying awake in school that day was a struggle, but I survived, and the trip was definitely worth it!