How I fight is why I'm feeling sore
First off! Exciting news: STONE TEMPLE PILOTS CONCERT SATURDAY!!!! JB is coming along with me, despite not being a fan of STP (I'm not allowed to go alone). MAN, AM I EXCITED!!!
Second, the main point of this post is to talk about my weekend. I just thought I'd get my STP excitement out before the really long post that I doubt ANYONE will make it all the way through. Well, here goes!
I've just spent my weekend at camp crimson (OU freshmen camp) and the OU pride orientation. And I've been kept REALLY busy. My entire body is sore today. I'll try to keep this down to the important/amusing/interesting (to me at least) points. Still a long post though.
I will say that I'm more worn out from the Pride (OU's marching band) orientation than camp crimson. Camp started at noon on thursday and let out at three on saturday. However, from four to nine on saturday, there was pride thing were we practiced the music and learned the marching routine. The pride thing was okay while doing the music. Then we had to walk to the indoor training center. But we were locked out. WHICH WAS GOOD. So we practiced some outside. WHICH WAS GOOD. Halfway through the marching part, we were let into the center. WHICH WAS HORRIBLE. That building was swelteringly hot. I've never been so hot in my life. It was way hotter in there after the sun went down than it was outside in the full sun. At least outside there was wind. But in the building they refused to turn on the fans. The pride thing was more brutal than ALL of camp crimson combined.
Oh and it turns out that the other trombone player from my grade at North (who I've known since KINDERGARTEN) and I are living on the same floor of the same dorm tower.
Okay, the way camp crimson was organized was the 600 of us were randomly divided into three families (I was in Barker). Then each family was further divided into a bunch of small groups of around 20 kids. My group had 21 (it was called Van Vleet). We had (I think) 7 guys and 14 girls. Something like that at least. Each small group also had a male and a female counselor (older students). Ours were both sophomores. Most counselors gave their groups some sort of markers. We got red and black bandannas. I ended up tying mine around my right upper arm. Most other groups had variously colored bandannas too. One group called Whitehand was given white bandannas that they tied around their left hands. Not on their wrists, on their hands. They looked to me like they had injured their hands and had them bandaged. One group was given sunglasses with brightly colored plastic earpiece things. Another group had plastic Hawaiian leis. But the best markers I saw was one group that had those pirate hats from Long John Silver's. I felt like I was in Survivor.
My group was constantly coming in second in events. It was kinda depressing. We had to make boats from cardboard and masking tape (well, we could choose within the group who wanted to make the boat and who wanted to make team t-shirts. The girls sans me did the shirts and the guys plus me did the boat.) We had to have a person ride in the boat and have two others swim by it and push it. We found our smallest girl to ride in it. For the swimmers we got a guy who's a lifeguard and another who swam on the school team. Unfortunately, the second guy had gotten knee surgery a week ago. I kid you not. Why he came to camp crimson with all the physical activity we did is beyond me. We might've won in our family if he hadn't had freaking STITCHES in his knees. I think we should've picked someone else, but oh well. We still came in second.
We also had to do a relay race. A girl I knew from North was in my group and she and I did an event where one of us wore a graduation robe and cap. Then we sprinted to the other side and the other person had to put on the gown and cap. Then we sprinted back. We got lucky. Other people had to do some really bizarre things. Some weren't too bad, like a human pyramid and a three-legged race, but some were crazy. In one event, someone had to put peanut butter on their nose, put a cheerio on the peanut butter, and their partner had to bite it off (the cheerio, I mean). Another event involved a plate of what looked like whipped cream with life savers buried in it. One person had to fish out the life savers using only their mouth and spit them into their partners hands. But that wasn't the weirdest. In the weirdest, both people were blindfolded. One had to lie down. The other had a marshmallow put in their mouth. The marshmallow was attached to a string which was attached to another marshmallow that the standing person had to lower into the lying person's mouth. Both are blindfolded, remember. And the second marshmallow was dipped in chocolate so the lying person ended up covered in chocolate. It was weird. But we were winning by the last event. However, the last event was a whole group one where we stood in a line holding hands and had to pass a hula hoop down the line. But our hula hoop was horribly bent and misshapen. So we came in second.
We also had to do stuff like make a team chant for a chant-off and do team-building activities. The strangest of the latter was we had to stand in a line, legs more than shoulder width apart. Then the person at the end of the line had to do an army crawl between everyone's legs. But they had to say stuff about themselves as they went and if they stopped talking, they had to stop crawling. It was weird. And kinda awkward considering how cute some of the guys were.
There was pool party after we raced the boats. I believe the whole camp got yelled at by a lifeguard. We had been playing some game called whirlpool or something like that. Everyone walked in a circle one direction for a while until the pool's water were going in that direction. Then someone would abruptly switch the directions and everyone would try to switch too, fighting the water currents. Then there was belly flop contest. Two people of note for this. One guy did all sorts of crazy acrobatics and flips and stuff. And one guy (from my small group) wore a speedo as he did the belly flop contest. He was pretty good at belly flopping so we'd start cheering "speedo! speedo!" He told me later he thought they were chanting his name: "Stephen! Stephen!" Later that night we had retro night. Amusingly, two thirds of us just put on a tie-dye shirt. There was a hypnotist there. The most amusing thing he did was make one guy think he was Elton John and the other volunteers were ballerina dancers who danced in the aisles. And my aisle got all guys. But the song "Elton John" was perfoming was Can You Feel the Love Tonight. Some of those ballerina guys started dancing with each other. It was absolutely hilarious. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Thank you, hypnotist! Another funny point of the show was that some people in the audience went under too. The hypnotist collected most of them and added them to the volunteers. However, he missed this girl who was one row behind me. At some point after following his suggestions from her chair, she went racing up to the stage and stole someone's chair. It was hilarious.
Now there may have been 600 of us but we only really hung out with our small groups. I spent almost the whole time with one of three people. A girl I knew from North was in my group. I hung out with her when I couldn't find either of my newly acquired guy friends or if they were with the other guys (some of whom I didn't get along with as well). One of the guys I didn't get along too well with was this really loud, rap-loving guy who had moved from Liberia two years ago.
One of my two new guy friends this guy from South Carolina who I know is in the honors college, lived in China for two years, is a preacher's son, and is national merit. I didn't click with him quite as well as my other guy friend but he was still pleasant enough. He had to leave early so I never got his phone number or anything. But he's in honors college, so the odds of me running into him again are fairly good.
My other guy friend (who I now like to refer to as my camp buddy) is the swimmer who had gotten knee surgery a week ago. He's from Texas (actually half of the camp was from Texas). The group ended up awarding this poor guy a Purple Heart award (we had to create awards for the group members). The only thing he never did because of his knees in all of the crazy intense physical activity was take the stairs. That's actually the first time I talked to him. The rest of the small group had decided to take the stairs. Oh, and we were living on the tenth floor. My friend and I decided to just take the elevators despite the wait. On the elevator he tells me about his week-old knee surgery and how that's why he's not taking the stairs. I say that I'm just lazy. He laughs and says it's good enough for him (once we reach the bottom, the South Carolina guy runs up to us and calls us cheaters). The Texas guy and I also started to hang out more when we were doing a whole-camp game of musical chairs. He jokingly informed me that he'd beat me to a pulp to get a chair. I told him that he had knee surgery a week ago so I doubted it. About halfway through the game, all the people between he and I had gone out. This round he jumps the gun and sits down before the music stops. Unfortunately, he was right in front of me and this unconsciously caused me to sit down too. Now that we were both out, he turned to me and told me he guessed he wouldn't have to beat me to a pulp anyways. I told him that I was actually relieved because I was a little afraid of accidentally sitting on his knees. But when I really bonded with him was when we were coming up with our chant. The counselors had asked for song suggestions. I suggested Iron Man. The male counselor looked right at me and said "what's that?" I said "Black Sabbath?" hoping he'd go "oh! Duh!" But he didn't. He just shook his head, completely lost. He and the female counselor (and most of the small group) seem to only listen to rap. After the male counselor had no idea what Iron Man was, I just gave up on trying to help make the chant. I was sitting next to the Texas guy and we just started having our own conversation, in which I discovered he's apparently the only one in the group who actually likes rock music. He's apparently particularly into stuff like Chimaira and Pink Floyd although he did know Alice in Chains and stuff like that. He's apparently also the only person in the group aside from me who's seen Fight Club. At some point I asked him if he'd heard some classic rock song (can't remember what, maybe the Immigrant Song) that no one in our group seemed to have heard. He responded "of course. Who hasn't?" I said "I'm sure I can think of someone." He grins and points at the male counselor. I say "Exactly." I was able to get the Texas guy's phone number before we left. Which is good because I thought the odds of me seeing him again just randomly are much slimmer than my odds of seeing the South Carolina guy again. And like I said earlier, I did click with the Texas guy much more than with the South Carolina guy. Of course, afterwards, I found out that the Texas guy is in my math class of only about a hundred people, making it far more likely I'd encounter him. But oh well.
I've been talking to him online some. Mainly we've been whoring our music out to each other. Always fun.
Well, I think that's all I have to say about my weekend. Overall it was pretty fun. But man was I sore on Sunday! And if you actually read ALL of this and made it to here, you are an amazingly awesome friend (with a lot of time on your hands)!
Second, the main point of this post is to talk about my weekend. I just thought I'd get my STP excitement out before the really long post that I doubt ANYONE will make it all the way through. Well, here goes!
I've just spent my weekend at camp crimson (OU freshmen camp) and the OU pride orientation. And I've been kept REALLY busy. My entire body is sore today. I'll try to keep this down to the important/amusing/interesting (to me at least) points. Still a long post though.
I will say that I'm more worn out from the Pride (OU's marching band) orientation than camp crimson. Camp started at noon on thursday and let out at three on saturday. However, from four to nine on saturday, there was pride thing were we practiced the music and learned the marching routine. The pride thing was okay while doing the music. Then we had to walk to the indoor training center. But we were locked out. WHICH WAS GOOD. So we practiced some outside. WHICH WAS GOOD. Halfway through the marching part, we were let into the center. WHICH WAS HORRIBLE. That building was swelteringly hot. I've never been so hot in my life. It was way hotter in there after the sun went down than it was outside in the full sun. At least outside there was wind. But in the building they refused to turn on the fans. The pride thing was more brutal than ALL of camp crimson combined.
Oh and it turns out that the other trombone player from my grade at North (who I've known since KINDERGARTEN) and I are living on the same floor of the same dorm tower.
Okay, the way camp crimson was organized was the 600 of us were randomly divided into three families (I was in Barker). Then each family was further divided into a bunch of small groups of around 20 kids. My group had 21 (it was called Van Vleet). We had (I think) 7 guys and 14 girls. Something like that at least. Each small group also had a male and a female counselor (older students). Ours were both sophomores. Most counselors gave their groups some sort of markers. We got red and black bandannas. I ended up tying mine around my right upper arm. Most other groups had variously colored bandannas too. One group called Whitehand was given white bandannas that they tied around their left hands. Not on their wrists, on their hands. They looked to me like they had injured their hands and had them bandaged. One group was given sunglasses with brightly colored plastic earpiece things. Another group had plastic Hawaiian leis. But the best markers I saw was one group that had those pirate hats from Long John Silver's. I felt like I was in Survivor.
My group was constantly coming in second in events. It was kinda depressing. We had to make boats from cardboard and masking tape (well, we could choose within the group who wanted to make the boat and who wanted to make team t-shirts. The girls sans me did the shirts and the guys plus me did the boat.) We had to have a person ride in the boat and have two others swim by it and push it. We found our smallest girl to ride in it. For the swimmers we got a guy who's a lifeguard and another who swam on the school team. Unfortunately, the second guy had gotten knee surgery a week ago. I kid you not. Why he came to camp crimson with all the physical activity we did is beyond me. We might've won in our family if he hadn't had freaking STITCHES in his knees. I think we should've picked someone else, but oh well. We still came in second.
We also had to do a relay race. A girl I knew from North was in my group and she and I did an event where one of us wore a graduation robe and cap. Then we sprinted to the other side and the other person had to put on the gown and cap. Then we sprinted back. We got lucky. Other people had to do some really bizarre things. Some weren't too bad, like a human pyramid and a three-legged race, but some were crazy. In one event, someone had to put peanut butter on their nose, put a cheerio on the peanut butter, and their partner had to bite it off (the cheerio, I mean). Another event involved a plate of what looked like whipped cream with life savers buried in it. One person had to fish out the life savers using only their mouth and spit them into their partners hands. But that wasn't the weirdest. In the weirdest, both people were blindfolded. One had to lie down. The other had a marshmallow put in their mouth. The marshmallow was attached to a string which was attached to another marshmallow that the standing person had to lower into the lying person's mouth. Both are blindfolded, remember. And the second marshmallow was dipped in chocolate so the lying person ended up covered in chocolate. It was weird. But we were winning by the last event. However, the last event was a whole group one where we stood in a line holding hands and had to pass a hula hoop down the line. But our hula hoop was horribly bent and misshapen. So we came in second.
We also had to do stuff like make a team chant for a chant-off and do team-building activities. The strangest of the latter was we had to stand in a line, legs more than shoulder width apart. Then the person at the end of the line had to do an army crawl between everyone's legs. But they had to say stuff about themselves as they went and if they stopped talking, they had to stop crawling. It was weird. And kinda awkward considering how cute some of the guys were.
There was pool party after we raced the boats. I believe the whole camp got yelled at by a lifeguard. We had been playing some game called whirlpool or something like that. Everyone walked in a circle one direction for a while until the pool's water were going in that direction. Then someone would abruptly switch the directions and everyone would try to switch too, fighting the water currents. Then there was belly flop contest. Two people of note for this. One guy did all sorts of crazy acrobatics and flips and stuff. And one guy (from my small group) wore a speedo as he did the belly flop contest. He was pretty good at belly flopping so we'd start cheering "speedo! speedo!" He told me later he thought they were chanting his name: "Stephen! Stephen!" Later that night we had retro night. Amusingly, two thirds of us just put on a tie-dye shirt. There was a hypnotist there. The most amusing thing he did was make one guy think he was Elton John and the other volunteers were ballerina dancers who danced in the aisles. And my aisle got all guys. But the song "Elton John" was perfoming was Can You Feel the Love Tonight. Some of those ballerina guys started dancing with each other. It was absolutely hilarious. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Thank you, hypnotist! Another funny point of the show was that some people in the audience went under too. The hypnotist collected most of them and added them to the volunteers. However, he missed this girl who was one row behind me. At some point after following his suggestions from her chair, she went racing up to the stage and stole someone's chair. It was hilarious.
Now there may have been 600 of us but we only really hung out with our small groups. I spent almost the whole time with one of three people. A girl I knew from North was in my group. I hung out with her when I couldn't find either of my newly acquired guy friends or if they were with the other guys (some of whom I didn't get along with as well). One of the guys I didn't get along too well with was this really loud, rap-loving guy who had moved from Liberia two years ago.
One of my two new guy friends this guy from South Carolina who I know is in the honors college, lived in China for two years, is a preacher's son, and is national merit. I didn't click with him quite as well as my other guy friend but he was still pleasant enough. He had to leave early so I never got his phone number or anything. But he's in honors college, so the odds of me running into him again are fairly good.
My other guy friend (who I now like to refer to as my camp buddy) is the swimmer who had gotten knee surgery a week ago. He's from Texas (actually half of the camp was from Texas). The group ended up awarding this poor guy a Purple Heart award (we had to create awards for the group members). The only thing he never did because of his knees in all of the crazy intense physical activity was take the stairs. That's actually the first time I talked to him. The rest of the small group had decided to take the stairs. Oh, and we were living on the tenth floor. My friend and I decided to just take the elevators despite the wait. On the elevator he tells me about his week-old knee surgery and how that's why he's not taking the stairs. I say that I'm just lazy. He laughs and says it's good enough for him (once we reach the bottom, the South Carolina guy runs up to us and calls us cheaters). The Texas guy and I also started to hang out more when we were doing a whole-camp game of musical chairs. He jokingly informed me that he'd beat me to a pulp to get a chair. I told him that he had knee surgery a week ago so I doubted it. About halfway through the game, all the people between he and I had gone out. This round he jumps the gun and sits down before the music stops. Unfortunately, he was right in front of me and this unconsciously caused me to sit down too. Now that we were both out, he turned to me and told me he guessed he wouldn't have to beat me to a pulp anyways. I told him that I was actually relieved because I was a little afraid of accidentally sitting on his knees. But when I really bonded with him was when we were coming up with our chant. The counselors had asked for song suggestions. I suggested Iron Man. The male counselor looked right at me and said "what's that?" I said "Black Sabbath?" hoping he'd go "oh! Duh!" But he didn't. He just shook his head, completely lost. He and the female counselor (and most of the small group) seem to only listen to rap. After the male counselor had no idea what Iron Man was, I just gave up on trying to help make the chant. I was sitting next to the Texas guy and we just started having our own conversation, in which I discovered he's apparently the only one in the group who actually likes rock music. He's apparently particularly into stuff like Chimaira and Pink Floyd although he did know Alice in Chains and stuff like that. He's apparently also the only person in the group aside from me who's seen Fight Club. At some point I asked him if he'd heard some classic rock song (can't remember what, maybe the Immigrant Song) that no one in our group seemed to have heard. He responded "of course. Who hasn't?" I said "I'm sure I can think of someone." He grins and points at the male counselor. I say "Exactly." I was able to get the Texas guy's phone number before we left. Which is good because I thought the odds of me seeing him again just randomly are much slimmer than my odds of seeing the South Carolina guy again. And like I said earlier, I did click with the Texas guy much more than with the South Carolina guy. Of course, afterwards, I found out that the Texas guy is in my math class of only about a hundred people, making it far more likely I'd encounter him. But oh well.
I've been talking to him online some. Mainly we've been whoring our music out to each other. Always fun.
Well, I think that's all I have to say about my weekend. Overall it was pretty fun. But man was I sore on Sunday! And if you actually read ALL of this and made it to here, you are an amazingly awesome friend (with a lot of time on your hands)!