Jonny ’25 and Grant ’24, share a recap of the day’s activities, which included a beach clean up, snorkeling at a coral reef, and a nighttime lesson on invertebrates.
Wake Up:
(Grant): The alarm connected to my wrist starts blaring in my ear. I’m so thankful my mom bought me this sportswatch even when I asked her not to. I begin to slowly roll out of bed at 5:30am. I look down to see my bestie for the restie Jonny sleeping next to me. I shout his name from the bed above.
(Jonny): Grant woke me up at 5:50 this morning. I rolled out of bed and headed straight for the beach.
HIT Exercise:
(Grant): After me and Jonny watched the sunrise that morning we met the group in the Octagon.
(Jonny): After meeting the group at the Octagon, we headed for the dock where Murph and Bronte (our certified fitness instructors for the morning) met us to begin our high intensity training session. The workout itself was tough, and a lot of sweat was shed, but, of course, we were rewarded with a cool-off dock jump into the cut (the ocean).
Breakfast:
(Grant): Finally, food! My eyes begin to bulge as I feel my stomach grumble. I look at the trays of food as I wash my hands outside. I see Eggs, a Soupy Oatmeal, and fresh muffins. I start to push people out of the way as my hanger grows.
(Jonny): We ate our breakfast on the patio outside of the dining hall, where we all sat around a wooden table and laughed together.
Half Sound Beach:
(Grant): We get to our activity for the day. It’s a chance for us to snorkel at a coral reef on Half Sound Beach. I hop into the blue van that I was assigned to and they finally take Jonny away from me. But on my bus I have a motley crew: Baokun, Jason, Ella, Rose, and Ilsa. We set out on our adventure playing games on the bus and finally we made it to the beach. I jumped out of the bus full of excitement. The first thing we do when we get on the beach is start to pick up trash for 35 minutes. I made it a mini game trying to get points for the amount of trash I pickup. Finally we finish picking up trash. I collapse in exhaustion.
(Jonny): After picking up trash from the beach and searching for sea glass with Ella, Cori, Rose, Ilsa, Sophie and Jason, we hopped in the ocean for our first snorkel. And it was so worth it. We swam out pretty far and explored the coral reefs of the area, but we had to be careful not to touch the coral. We saw so many cool fish, and a ton of blue fish. After that, we walked along a path and discovered a beautiful hidden cove (and of course, we swam in it)
Gazebo Time:
(Grant): During our exploration periods we plan to go get ice cream and are once again denied (the New Hampton students got the bikes first). So instead we all had a pretty laid back free period. I ended up going to the gazebo and meeting other people in our group there. I started to write some poems and eat animal crackers.
(Jonny): I taught Rose and Jason some soccer skills in the pavilion, and they low key crushed it. After that, we ate some snacks and headed for dinner.
Dinner:
(Grant): Finally we’re back to truly the most important part of the day. I had Cornbread, Beans, and Watermelons. We went upstairs where others began to pile their food onto my tray. At this point I am expected to be a human garbage disposal. No matter how much I look like I protested it on the outside, on the inside I low-key loved it.
(Jonny): I ate some cornbread, salad, and watermelon for dinner on the upper deck of the dining hall, where we saw the sun go down.
Footy:
(Grant): To be honest I had no clue what to do. Jonny just kept telling me we should play Footy but I hated soccer so I thought I was gonna be in for a rough ride. But as long as I did it with the people in my group it’s all good.
(Jonny): We played some footy on the beach, but it was pretty dark out so we couldn’t see much. We used flashlights as our light source, and we ended with a calm rondo.
Lesson on Invertebrates:
(Grant): I blankly stare at the slideshow presentation. Photos of different types of invertebrates pop up on the screen and they explain it very simply to us. I loved learning about all these different types of animals and can’t wait to tell Mr. Calhoun about it.
Adventure Under the Dock:
(Jonny): We went knees deep under the dock, searching for wildlife. We saw pufferfish, jellyfish, crabs, needle fish and lots of other critters.
Goodnight everybody!
