The activities that brought the team together By A.C. Berry

This was my very first expedition with this team. We had two main activities that we liked while we were in California. One was a game called camouflage, and the other was rock climbing.  I felt like these two activities brought the team together.

 Camouflage is a game that we played in the Channel Islands. This game is similar to hide and go seek, only the seeker cannot move at all out of his spot; he has to use his eyes to see the people hiding. One time Wes, our staff member, was hiding behind a small tree. Now, know that Wes is a dude with one large manly frame. Chris barely saw Wes. He saw his pants by an inch. At first he thought it was a fox but then Wes came out and Chris, shocked, asked “How did you fit behind there?” Camouflage is a very fun game to play, but sometimes you can get battle wounds from it. I do remember this one game where Nolan did not have enough time so he jumped into the grass. In the grass there was a rock and he cut open his leg.  He tried to still play but the pain was too much for him. Nolan is a trooper for trying to continue after he cut open his leg. Once he got a Band-Aid on it he was like ok guys who want to keep playing, like nothing happened. I think that this activity is a great team building activity. I say this because for one, if you are the seeker you have to trust that the people moved forward. If you are hiding with someone else you have to trust them to not give away your spot. It is also fun and a strategy people use to get out there frustration.

The next activity that we did was an indoor rock climbing gym. We chose this activity, one because it was raining outside, and two we did not want to get all wet. I think rock climbing was fun. Everyone tried to at least get on the rock and climb as high as they could. Chris is afraid of rock climbing because he thinks the rope is going to break on him.  Since it was inside he decided to try it out and overcome his fear. He got up on the wall and got 80 percent up the wall and called it off. I thought it was so cool that the team was just cheering him on because we all knew that he did not like this activity but just him going up on the rock and having the mindset really got the team going. Alex is really good at rock climbing so Wes gave him a challenge along with me to complete a 5.11, the highest level rock climbing goes to is a 5.15 so he was trying to see how good we were. We could only get up halfway but Wes was impressed on how we would not give up.

In conclusion I think this has been one of the best expeditions I have ever been on. Why, because this team loves to work together and cheer each other on and give positive feedback.  I think this was a great start for me coming into the group and that it is going to be a great semester.