Training Day 1

Training Day 1: Monday, January 2
Today I flew from Phoenix to Fresno. I flew on the tiniest plane I have ever seen in my entire life. (not a fan) My dear friend Bianca picked me up and we romped around Fresno thrifting, making a Target run, eating lunch at Panera, and walking around. We had so much fun together and I sure am going to miss her greatly this semester! She then proceeded to drive me to the High Sierra (aka HS) campus where she took the grand tour with me (given by my lovely boss...Katie Burns!), helped set up my room (it's HUGE...way bigger than my dorm freshman year and my apartment last semester...AWESOME!), and dropped me off.
Fun facts! High sierra takes over a summer camp for the school year...so...we basically live...at summer camp! We live in dorm style cabins, have a ropes course on site, have many fun toys, live very close to our professors, have family style dinners every night, only 40ish students come up, go on two 5 day backpacking trips, go boating, kayaking, only have most classes Tuesday-Thursday, and basically explore the outdoors while going to school! So fun!
That afternoon...I met with my staff! I already love them so so so much! Katie Burns (the RD), Robert (the intern), and the rest of the student leadership team!: Jeff (academic mentor), Caity (service mentor), Aron (the guy's community mentor), and O'neil (spiritual mentor) We were given thick binders of tons of information, scarves , and toy dart guns! Katie Burns told us that this week she was basically acting as are "agent/manager" and making sure we kept on schedule and were at every event/dinner/meeting we were supposed to be at!
The first thing we did was all head down to the low ropes course and had to perform two tasks that required much team work...one we had to swing on a rope and land on a tiny wooden boxy...all 7 of us and then we had to slack line a big square without touching the ground. Challenging but fun! We went over a few things, then went to dinner at the director of HS (Rob Simpson's) house....and played "The Family Game" (so much fun!) Then, we returned to campus and packed up gear/bags...because we were told that the next day we were going on a retreat at a cabin in Yosemite! I have never been! Then, us student leaders decided to all sleep outside on "star rock" (basically a huge rock at the top of a hill that's a popular sleepover spot). This was so great for us to break the ice...we talked about relationships and slept under the stars together! Next up....day 2!