Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

I was talking about the start of the science camp. At around 115pm, the students finally trickled in to the designated classrooms with their overnight bags.

Just like with the student leadership camp one room was utilized for the boys and another for the girls, but reverse of the ones that were used last time, so that the girls are now closer to the restroom.

The next in a long series of problems we encountered was that the student leadership camp attendees who were in charge of the icebreaker activity not only arrived more than thirty minutes late, one of them only showed up to say that her dad was picking her up to bring her home because she felt sick. Fortunately, two of their friends that they had a very late and extended lunch with could stay, and helped the one facilitator left behind.

For the groupings, by the way, we just numbered their nametags from one to five based on the order of their registration. Since almost half of the participants were from a nearby technical school (from the same order, but not the same town, where I spent my elementary and high school hears) it didn’t take them long to find out the pattern of the groupings. But it was a little too late for them to do anything about it and arrange that their late former schoolmates would be in the same group as them, because most of them arrived early.

Before the planned activity, each of the five groups were given a few minutes to come up with a name for their team – which was related to either science or the outdoors. Definitely, we said, taking the name “Einstein” was out of the question.

The simplicity with which the groups called themselves “One”, “Suns”, “Fire”, “Ice” and “Nirvana” should have been an indication of the students’ enthusiasm for that kind of proceedings.

The activity itself that the assigned facilitators picked turned out to be more of a brainteaser challenge than for getting to know their fellow participants, which they got from the wrong part of the book I gave them for reference. But it piqued the participants’ interest.

Too bad that in my opinion the first question was the most ingenious: how to turn the expression “5 + 5 + 5 = 550” into a correct statement without turning it into an inequality, and the puzzles just seem to go downhill from there. Good thing also that there was a single clear winner after all the questions, with no tiebreakers prepared.

The first outdoor activity after that was the kite flying. Two of the groups brought one kite each; two of them brought none, while the last group brought three. The latter said they were willing to lend their kites to the other groups after they had determined which kites flew the lowest. After all, it was a competition on speed, height and duration.

After that we had snacks, then proceeded to the area designated for survival cooking. There was another miscommunication about who was supposed to bring the materials from the faculty room, but other than that, which caused a short delay, the activity proceeded well.

I’ll have to end session number 601 here. Class dismissed.