Before I start, I want to apologize for the lateness of this entry. I was reading last night, and after finishing a chapter, I laid my head down on my pillow with the intention of resting for just a second, then I woke up this morning thinking, oh no! The blog!
So it’s late, but it’s here.
The Ropes Course we did yesterday was very interesting. We all split up into groups and did different exercises. One of the first things we did was a “trust fall.” I am very hesitant to do activities like that, and it showed. But after a few tries, I trusted Ritika, my partner, wholly. It was a good learning experience because I had to completely ignore my instincts and trust somebody else.
We then walked fifteen minutes into the woods to do the next exercise. The walk was scenic and gorgeous. I love the New England forests; they’re absolutely lovely. Woods were far and few in Peru, unless you count the rainforest.
Like I said, the woods were really pretty.
All the exercises we did that day were about leadership, but as a lot of other girls in my group, I treated it just like a game, because hey, it was fun!
I stepped back to let other people lead; as we learned in class, sometimes being a good leader means giving other people a chance to express themselves, and as I am one who is very comfortable leading and making my opinions known, I thought today would be a good idea to just be in the background for once. I happily applied myself to whatever the group agreed on was the best method for our tasks, and it all worked out well.
Lunch was so much fun; we ate at an adorable little beach by where we were doing the activities, and it was covered in shells. I happily beach combed, as whenever I visit beaches, I search for shells to add to my fish’s bowl at home. He’ll be happy with the haul this time.
The gorgeous shells.
We ate lunch together and talked about the activities, and how we were looking forward to the ones after lunch.
Us girls talking at the beach.
Those were a little more challenging, but the general consensus was that the only really difficult one was the rope challenge, where we had to get our entire group onto a tightrope. We learned a lot of things that day, like none of us have very good balance, but when we all work together, we can make anything happen.
It was an exhausting, informative, but very fun day that only reinforced my absolute sureness that this is the right place for me right now.
The day wasn't all educational. We got henna tattoos!
Mariana,
ReplyDeleteThese ‘trust’ exercises can be fun but sine they’re also physical in nature, we have to be practical. Although I might trust Irene implicitly, considering that I weigh two and a half times as much as her I don’t believe I would ‘trust’ her to catch me as a I fall backwards.
Some of the other exercises, though, are great tools to help the team learn to work—as a team.
I keep reading about these ‘games’ that you all played. And while they may seem like they were games, they were really exercises designed to teach you. Games you play to have fun and even though you can have fun with these exercises, their goals are different.