The Princess Pat, Lumberjack, and Ninja Attack

I had the awesome opportunity to go to girls camp this week, largely thanks to Drew and my friend Traci who were able to watch Vivi and Rafe for me.  We left early Monday morning on the Shinkansen, hauling all of our gear and generally taking up far too much space.

But look at how good my girls are!  Cracking their scriptures to pass the time . . .

We took the Shin from Iwakuni to Hiroshima then transferred to an express shinkansen train that took us to Yokohama with only a few stops in between.  It took about 4 and 1/2 hours.  We grabbed some bento boxes and pulled up some floor in the train station while we waited for transfers.  

From the Yokohama shin station we had to take a short train to the Yokohama local station, where we transferred to another train that took us to Ikego--a housing complex associated with Yokosuka Naval Base.

They have such good attitudes.

One of the amazing stake camp leaders picked us up at the station and drove us about a mile to the campground.  We got unpacked and decorated our campsite.  The girls were divided by year and I was over the 3rd years.  The theme for the camp was "'Wicked'ness Never Was Happiness," so everything had a Wizard of Oz spin to it.  The 3rd years were the scarecrows and our campsite was The Cornfield.  The YW president from Tokyo 2nd ward brought all the scarecrow stuff and one of the YW leaders from Yokosuka illustrated all the signs for camp.  I brought streamers but it's so humid here they were completely saturated in about an hour so we took them down.  

The stake owns a lot of camping stuff, and they rented the rest of the things they needed from the Morale Wellness Resource (MWR) Center in Yokosuka.  The sea hawks there are extremely aggressive (one of the leaders told me she had been about to take a bite of her ice cream cone on base and a hawk dive bombed her, clipped her lip with its talon, and took the whole thing) so, every time we ate we had to be under a tent, hawks circling threatening above!  The stake provided buckets for the girls to sit on.  I was very glad I'd hauled my camp chair on the train so I had a chair with a back to lounge in all week.

They also had made these little "mailboxes" for the girls and leaders to write notes of encouragement to each other.  Apparently I was supposed to have a cute handout with a treat for all the girls in my year group every day, but I'm assuming that email got lost in our presidency transition, so the girls had to make due with heartfelt notes on notebook paper.  Ah well.  

One day while I was sitting there writing notes I thought I felt a bug crawling up the back of my leg, but convinced myself it was just a blade of grass.  After a few more seconds of the sensation however, I hazarded a look and spent the next little while screaming.

Every day at camp the girls switched off doing activities with MWR.  There was a hike, rock climbing (defying gravity), rappelling (over the rainbow), archery (Fiyero's arrows), a ropes course (don't remember . . .), and kayaking (sea of poppies).  We went on the hike first.  

It was fascinating.  There were medieval ruins of a samurai road and shallow caves carved out of the mountain that were graves/memorials for the common people.  Then a little further on were crazy cave networks dug by hand by POW's in WWII.  We went into a bunch of them and looked around.  Our guide also showed us where they burned the bodies of the POW's that died.

Apparently they had talked about having us rappel off the top of the crematorium, but they thought it might be too scary for the beehives.  I tend to agree.

We also stopped in a large cave where the Japanese used to store live ordinance.  Our guide told us some of it actually blew up and blasted a hole in the wall that connected it to a different cave.  There were still bits and pieces of rusted stuff all over the place, along with many signs warning people not to pick anything up off the ground.  I told my YW this did not apply to Laffy Taffy wrappers. 

I didn't get any pictures of rock climbing because it was raining heavily while we were there, but it was the only rain we had all week, so we were lucky.  It was just one of those portable climbing walls.  I was very grateful for my Climb On Safely training though, because they had the YW belaying.  One of my YCL's wanted to climb the wall I was helping people learn to belay on.  I think she was up there for at least half an hour.  I wasn't really paying attention to her ("Are you even looking at me?!" "No!") because I was teaching, but when she hadn't come up or down any for 10 minutes I finally gave her my full attention and tried coaching her up the wall.  She is 5'11" with the limbs of a bird, but she did finally make it to the top and was very pleased with herself.

We also got to do some archery!  My girls loved it, but there were only enough targets for half of them to go at a time, so I kept the half that wasn't shooting entertained with some Ninja Attack while they waited.

I was a little selfish and made sure I got to shoot a bit as well.  I am sorry to report that I did not listen to the instructions very carefully though, so I held the bow wrong and ended up with a pretty amazing bruise from the string whacking my elbow every time I let an arrow fly.  Here is the most flattering picture I have ever taken of myself showing it off.  Hurray for waking up after sleeping in a tent!

And here's the progression of the bruise as of today.  I am flexing for your benefit.

I also failed to get pictures of rappelling, but I know one of the other leaders got a shot of me going down upside down, so after we've done our picture sharing I'll pop it up here.  When the girls were afraid while rappelling they would shout "leedle-leedle-leedle-leedle!" to give themselves confidence.  The Japanese man helping us out thought it was hilarious.  "Why you say 'reedoo-reedoo?"  I had one of my greatest victories of camp during rappelling.  One of the girls did NOT want to do it because she was afraid of heights.  They had 2 ropes on a vertical wall, then 2 ropes on about a 45% slope for the girls to practice.  It took me 20 minutes, but I finally convinced the girl to go down the slope.  In the end she shouted at me "IF I GO DOWN WILL YOU PROMISE TO JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?? AND PROMISE NOT TO MAKE ME DO THE HIGH ONE??"  I consented and she did it and she was happy she did, as I knew she would be.  Whew, it took a lot of wheedling though!  Dad, you'd have been proud.

The ropes course was actually pretty frustrating for my little 3rd years.  The loudest voices didn't necessarily have the best ideas, and the girls with the best ideas didn't have the leadership skills to make anyone listen to or help carry out their ideas.  It took them a LONG time to solve all the puzzles and there were definitely tears at one point.  But, the guy leading it said he had a lot of fun with us, so I guess that's a win.

 I had never seen this game before.  I should probably not post pictures about it in case anyone ever gets the chance to try it, but the idea the girls came up with was SO HARD, I had to share.  They made a 4 point harness to fly the lightest and strongest girl (she's a Japanese ballerina!) out to the middle to pick up the beanbags.  They spent a really long time making the harness and in the end they didn't even see it through.  They ended up sprawled dejectedly on the ground, saying it was an impossible puzzle and begging the guy to just let them give up.  It was very difficult to watch and stay silent.  Thankfully, the next game was easier.  A simple trust exercise! 

We had driven out to Yokosuka on Friday to kayak around in the ocean right off the base, but it was too choppy from the wind, so we ended up having a water fight and "playing" volleyball and playing Signs instead.  Also lots of lumberjack.  The girls really liked that one and played it pretty much any time they were free.

We also did lots of certifications.  The 3rd years got pretty darn good at starting fires.  Here they are doing it WITHOUT MATCHES!  That fire burned all evening--they did a great job with it.

We learned about poisonous and edible plants.  There were tons of mulberry trees around camp, and the girls were eager to try out their skills.  I'm pretty sure the tree in the main camp is stripped of all berries.  

 We cooked, well, heated ham in a pit and made potatoes and cobbler in dutch ovens.  Here they are being most unsafe and handling hot coals with flip-flops on.

 And they did an orienteering course that I think left them all even more confused about compasses than before.

It was mutually decided among the leaders that ours was the best group--they got along the best, they were the most helpful, and there were less of them so they were more manageable!  They are cuties.

On Tuesday night we had our ward devotionals.  Our modesty talk went very well--thank you all for your input!  Wednesday we had our leader devotional and we talked about stepping outside of our comfort zone in life and in the gospel.  The girls had lots to say and we had a good discussion.  We also did our value trek.  I had Individual Worth.  Since we couldn't have the girls wandering in the woods through all the creepers, snakes (I saw two HUGE ones), and bugs, they just had to walk along the campground road.  I climbed a tree to make it more interesting.  I think it might have been a really nice activity had there not been a bunch of idiot sailors deciding to go exploring the caves in the campground by night and running through the trek screaming like little girls. 

Thursday night we walked to the community room in the Ikego housing area and had our skit night.  Well, first we had delicious curry.  We ate very well all week.

Then every ward did a skit about their assigned value.  Galinda presided over the merriment.

Friday night we had a pool party then headed back to the base for testimony meeting.  It was awesome--as always!  One of the non-member girls who had come with a friend bore her testimony of how she had never realized Heavenly Father loved her or what a blessing and help it is to have that in your life.  She said she had felt the Spirit and wanted to always feel it and really wanted to be baptized.  There was a collective inhale of excitement!  Many of the girls talked about how much it felt like a family to be at girls camp.  I think they face a lot of opposition and judgement in their schools here, so there were many expressions of gratitude for the strength the gospel gives them and for the chance to be around others who share their standards.  

Saturday morning we packed up camp and headed back to the train station.  It was a long week and the girls were tired.

Imagine their joy when we had to stand on the shinkansen for an hour because I didn't splurge for reserved seating!  It looked about like this:

I'm afraid I was not very sympathetic.  We did finally get to sit down and we made it home in practically no time.  

And now I am home to sick kids and a husband I love.  So grateful for this calling!  I love girls camp :)