Camp Brosius 2012 week 1

Last week, I had the opportunity to go to camp, well...it's actually considered a summer school class. I had been dreading going to this camp and put it off three years before I made up my mind to just get it out of the way.

The name of the course is Camp Brosius. It is owned by the school of Physical Education and Tourism Management at IUPUI, so anyone that has a major in that school has to go to this camp before they can graduate. Camp Brosius is located in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin...a lovely 7 hour trip. This is a leadership camp. Here, they are trying to teach you how to become a better leader and what your strengths and weaknesses are as a leader. I did not want to go because I consider myself more of a follower than a leader.

At camp, we were put into families and we all had to lead two different activities. The challenges were extremely difficult, physically and mentally.

Our schedule for camp went pretty much as follows:

7:00--wake up to the reveille
7:30--breakfast (be there or be square!)
8:45--cabin checks
9:00-12:00--leadership activities
12:00--lunch
1:30-4:00--more leadership activities
4:00-5:00--FREE TIMEEE!!
5:00-6:00--committee time, unless you were done with your committee activity
6:00--dinner
7:30-9:30--committee activities
9:30-11:30--free time
11:30--in cabins, taps plays, lights out

With the exception of Wednesday and Friday, this was our week. From the time we got up to nightfall, we were go go go! It was so exhausting, but so much fun.

Wednesday night through Thursday morning, we went to Lake Winnebago, one of the largest lakes in the United States. While there, we pitched our tents, went geocaching, made hobo dinners on the fire, walked to the top of the most ginormous hill I've ever seen, watched the sunset over the lake, played a game called birdie on a perch, cooked s'mores over a camp fire, and went to bed.

Friday, we went to a high ropes course at a local high school. I went in not wanting to do ANYTHING because I'm such a scaredy-cat when it comes to dealing with heights. By the end, I had done more than half of the activities they had set up! I am so proud of myself for overcoming my fear of heights :) The activities I did included: climbing a rock wall and going down a zipline (my first time ever!!), walking across a log about 40 feet up in the air, a free-fall swing, and walking across a tight rope by grabbing the ropes that were hanging across it. It was such an incredible feeling and if I ever had the chance, I would definitely do it again!

Here are some photos from camp (via the other members of my family) :D

This is my family at the top of the hill watching the sunset <3

Making our Hobo dinners!

The actual Hobo dinners :)

Craziness picture!!

Us minus Matt, Kelly, and of course...AJ lol

The girls: Ashley, Maggie, Myself, and Sam

The Fam again...I swear, we can never take a decent picture! bahahaha

The girls again, watching the sunset this time :)

We call this one: "Chins" lol
After taking the previous photo, Maggie goes "oh geez, I definitely have 7 chins!", so we decided to just do a chins picture. It's lowkey my favorite picture from this week haha

The beginning of the sunset from our campsite

Sunset 1

Sunset 2

Rainbow crystals in the fire! Can you see the different colors?

Cabin Mates: Kortni, Lauren, and Jennifer <3

And here are the activities I did at the high ropes course. *note, none of the people in these pictures are me lol

Rock Wall

Zipline

Stationary log

Free Fallin' Swing!

Tight Rope Walk

I'll also leave you all with our skit from the talent show. It's Kelly doing his best impression of the Crocodile Hunter hahaha



Sorry this is such a long post, but I wanted to share my experience at Camp Brosius with everyone!

As I mentioned before, I went into camp dreading it and left with a second family...not actually wanting to leave. This was one of the hardest weeks of my life, but also one of the most enriching, empowering, and one of the most amazing weeks that I will never forget!