The ImMigrants Jesus's CampInteractive Web Page  A.K.A Flounder

   Hello, my name is Jesus Galvez and I am 14 years old.  I live in the Bronx and attended CJHS 145 Arturo Toscanini.  It all started when I was invited to an outdoor camp by my Captain(by the way I attend to a military school).  The next day, Saturday, my mother went to a meeting where she had to fill out some information papers.   After that meeting, all I had to do was to pack up and wait until Monday came. Monday was the day we met all the people who were going to be in our group.  It was a long 6 1/2 hours before we got to the place. We were headed to the Adirondacks mountains in upstate New York.  This park is a national New york state park which consists of  6 million acres.
        Enough about that, we did a lot of diffrent things on the trip from canoeing, rock climbing, hiking, finding directions with just a map, how to start fires without matches and so on.  To me, this trip was not that hard because I had been on outdoor expeditons before.  For the rest of the crew, it was hard, though.  The packs were heavy and by the end of the day we would be cold and exhausted.  By working as a team, things became easier to accomplish.  The canoeing part of the trip was amazing and interesting because I had never been canoeing.  Plus, the view was extraordinary.  Every day we would go for a swim. The canoeing section was for 4 days.     Then, we went the rock climbling for a day, my favorite part of the trip.  This was the day everybody was waiting for.  At first, I worried that I would fall but the instructors assured me it was safe.  By the end of the day, I had rock climbed 4 times and repelled 5 times off of a 92 foot rock.  It was so fun.  The best part was the repelling. The only thing I didn't like were the mosquitos.  That day, I learned that if I push myself  and think positive, anything is possible.
          The rest of that day, we got to relax.  All we had to do was dry our clothes.  (Oh yeah, by the way, it rained all the time during the canoeing session.  It was crazy.)  Getting back to the story, the next day we got ready to leave for hiking which was last major thing we were going to do on this camp trip.  Before that, we visited a nursing home nearby.  I enjoyed spending time with them.  I felt like we were making a difference in their lives.  We played a game where we threw a plastic ball in a mat and tried to score by making the numbers.  I don’t remember the name of the game but it was fun.  Then we were invited to lunch and soon we were out to get our packs to head out to the wilderness.
         The first day of hiking we were dropped off at the entrance of Pharaoh Lake Wilderness.  From there, we hiked 3.5 miles to where we were going to spent the night.  On the way there, we got to see a lot of different small animals like frogs, salamanders, snakes, birds, and a lot of bug, flies, and fishes.  When our group got to the designated place, it was almost night and the view was amazing.  ...Red and blue clouds in the horizon, the sun setting, the mountains turning black, the sounds of bull frogs ...and then behind you, a bunch of stars just beginning to take over the night, the water calm as ever, reflecting the scene.

The next day was warm and sunny.  I went fishing with a bug net so you could imagine how many fishes were there.  If you stand there for about a minute, the fishes would tickle your feet.   They were actually biting on me but it didn’t hurt.  That day, I caught about 25 fishes in 10 minutes.  Then around noon, we moved to Clear Pond for the night.  During those 4 days, the weather was good but the mosquitoes had to ruin it, again, like always.  That day was the day I was baptized.

  Actually, I almost drowned next to a big, slippery rock.  If you want to know the details of what happened, go to the PowerPoint presentation( I really do not feel like telling that story again because it’s so stupid).  After that, I was banned from getting deep in the water.

            That same night, we made our first fire in the wilderness.  We got the history on how this program started.  After the fire, I got a real big cut when I was trying to throw a rock with a rope around it over a tree’s branch.   We wanted to hang the food up there so the bears could not get it.  Well, it so happens that I got distracted while throwing the rock and hit myself in the arm.     Early in the morning, Ted and Adam woke us up to go to a nearby mountain called Treadway mountain.  It was 2.6 miles away from our camp site.  It took us about 1 ½ hour to get all the way to the top. The view was beautiful.  From there you could see the place were we started, mountains miles and miles away. It was like flying.  I hoped we would stay there but rain was coming so we had to leave early.  When we got back to camp, we gathered all our stuff and headed to the next site named Rock Pond.
          We saw a bit of history on our way to the site.  We walked by an old mine which was used to get iron and metal during the early 20’s.  There we stayed for a whole day and moved on to the next site in which we were going to have the last night outdoors. Oxshoe Pond was where we had to stay by ourselves for one whole night until the instructors would get us back.  We pretended we were shipwrecked and surviving on our own but it was not bad at all.   Julian, Matthew and I were singing and playing around, so that made it fun.  I knew that we had made it already.  Out of 7 kids who started, only we had survived and that felt great.  From then on, I felt that I had grown and proved that I can withstand more than most people.  That was the most rewarding part of the trip for me.

Myself, Julian and Adam's famous frog

The last day was the most amazing one because we made it in record time to the pick-up place.  We hiked  3.5 miles in 55 minutes, going up and down rocky terrain and in between mountains.  We also made it there two hours early and that time was used to chill out and think about the trip, or basically, just joke around.  There we knew we had made it.

But my story is not done yet.  There is still more.   We returned to base camp.  They gave us our gear  back and sent us to take a real bath after like 12 days of smelling bad and not using soap.  Later on that day, we had a banquet.  We played football until late at night, but we had to go to sleep because there was a challenge run of 2.6 miles the next day.  That was the last event and was the thing in which I succeeded the most.  I came in first place along with my counselor Adam and a counselor, Steve, of the other group.  I was out of breath for a minute but was soon back in business and went back to encourage more people to finish the race.

        After the race, we all had time to rest and then is was time to say good bye.  We all went to the tent in which we started our expedition. That’s where we had our graduation  and received our shirts.  It was the most emotional time of  the whole expedition.  After that, we were all on our way home, home sweet home.
 

                 THANKS

         I would like to give a special thanks to my instructors Adam and Ted, these were the people that helped us in time of need.  I would also like to thank Keisha, Halashon and Nick for helping us put together this web site. And last but not least, I would like to say thanks to the people who made this trip possible.

              Click picture to go to Marine official site             Click picture to got o Camp Interactive site

 
 
 

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