You’re Missing the Best Part!

                        There were forty of us there, forty kids, high school-aged and ready to take on the world, but kids nonetheless. Now, a week and a half into this trip that would be a pivotal moment in most of our lives, almost everyone had formed relationships with each other, and we had become a mismatched family of sorts. Though it felt like months, we had left our homes only ten days ago for this strange country, this “land down under.” Australia, land of kangaroos and didgeridoos, where they believed in the Dreamtime and bunyips and ate vegemite on toast with spaghetti for breakfast. Who wouldn’t be excited?

                        Everyone was confused on the short bus ride from whatever hotel we had crashed at the night before. “Where are we going?” some asked, or “What are we doing?” Still, anything anyone could do was guess.

                        Some people might have figured out what the day’s activity would be as we climbed slowly up, up, up the steep, hilly slope. Some might have even guessed when we stopped to take a few pictures to show Mom and Pop with the scenic Blue Mountains as a backdrop. Whether anyone guessed or not I don’t know, but what I do know is that I was clueless.

Clueless, that was, until we got there.

Rappelling, also called abseiling, they explained, is when you attach a safety line to the top of a steep cliff face and descend down. I was going to jump off a cliff. On purpose. Let’s just say I wasn’t especially thrilled about that. We spent the next four, maybe five hours just getting mentally prepared to do something that almost everyone was dreading like the start of school. There was a mix of music playing in the background that was obviously geared to get everyone in that positive “I CAN do this” state of mind, with a little help from AC/DC, C+C Music Factory, The Jackson Five, and even a little Eminem.