As I mentioned in my last post, I was camping for the past 2 days with people from my college house, Stouffer Mayer. It was quite the experience. First of all, I HATE camping- bugs, no showers, dirty bathrooms, dirt, other animals, etc. are not my favorite things. Steph convinced me to sign up though, so I did and I’m so happy. 

On Tuesday morning at 7:30 we boarded the bus to take us deep into the Poconos for some white water rafting. Now, this was about 90 minutes after I got home from the ER (see my previous post) so I was pretty darn tired. Instead of sleeping like any sane person would do, I talked the whole time- to Steph and to our new friends Dina, Samantha, Sarah, Jeff, and Bhavi. Everyone was super friendly and interesting and together we were a mix of freshmen and sophomores which gave us a lot to talk about. Once we got to the white water rafting place we waited around for a bit and played a couple silly games (high five buddy!) before heading down to the river. (Fun fact: we drove by Jim Thorpe’s memorial/burial place which was cool!) There hasn’t been much rain in Philly/the Poconos recently so the rapids were pretty much nonexistent. Jeff, Steph, our friend Chase, a freshman named Scott, and Bhavi jumped in a raft and proceeded to row our hearts out all 7 miles. We were pretty proud because we made it to the shore first, before any of the other 30 rafts. We treated the trip like a race, even though it wasn’t.

After rafting for about 3 hours, we got changed and went to the campsite. Once there, we split into our assigned cabins and dropped our stuff off before joining a big game of “never-have-I-ever” complete with running across a huge circle. Then we had dinner which, in true camping style, was peanut butter and jelly, Doritos and water. We had an AWESOME discussion over dinner about tons of different things, but we mostly listened to Clem, one of the graduate assistants and a group leader, talk about his studies as a policy major working in the Philadelphia prison system. His stories were hilarious and super interesting and we had tons of questions for him. Once it got dark, we all gathered around the fire and had s'mores! YUMMM

Finally, at about 10:30 we went to bed- Steph and I were exhausted and as a joke some of the kids on the trip were keeping a running tally of how long I had gone without sleep. The grand total? Drumroll…49 hours and 13 minutes! According to Clem, I could have committed a crime and gotten away with it because after 48 hours without sleep, a person can be declared mentally handicapped. Darn, I guess I missed my opportunity. Even though the cabin beds were super uncomfortable, I fell asleep right away and slept all the way until a rousing wake-up call at 8:00 sharp. 

This morning we ate pop-tarts and bananas for breakfast and boarded the bus for the 2-hour trip home. We had some more great conversations on the bus about all kinds of things. That’s the thing I love about Penn- people are so interesting here and are totally fine talking about all kinds of nerdy things. I love being accepted for being a nerd!

Later today I actually went to the gym, if you can believe it. I’m planning on running 2 5ks later on in September- one for pediatric cancer and one for sickle cell anemia, so I wanted to at least attempt to get in shape. It also helps that Steph goes to the gym EVERY SINGLE DAY. I’m tired just typing that last sentence. I’m hoping she’ll inspire me to stick with my exercise kick! I would have preferred to swim, but I don’t think my stitches would have done to well in the water. Oh well.

Now I’m off to a cookie night with the rest of my college house! Every Wednesday night the house dean of Stouffer bakes cookies and invites everyone over to talk and eat cookies. I’ve heard it’s a great time, so I’m excited to check it out and meet even MORE new people. Yay! I’ll let you know how the cookies are in tomorrow’s post. Goodnight!