Catalina Island

So I just realized that Billy's birthday post is way more lame than my birthday post.  His birthday this year was kind of blah because I had this big trip I was dreading the next day.  Sorry Billy!  Next year will be better :)

I for some reason agreed to go to Catalina Island with the 7th graders months before school ended.  As the time slowly approached, the idea seemed more and more terrible!  But I had agreed, so I mentally prepared as much as possible.  Overall, the trip was fun.  It was just a little overwhelming because I had really no idea what to expect.

We met at school Sunday night May 24th at 9 PM.  We rode a charter bus through the night (already a bad idea, am I right?) and ended up getting to long beach at 3:30 AM!  A little ahead of schedule.  We had to kill time until our ferry at 8:30.  Side note, my skin was so broken out because I was so stressed which made everything seem much worse!  We chilled in the McDonalds parking lot for a few hours trying to get some more sleep.  When it opened at 5:00 we went in to get breakfast and overwhelmed the workers.  After, we went to the beach to kill time and walked around.  Lo and behold we saw a man run out into the ocean and bludgeon a shark to death with a shovel!!  It was insane!!  All the kids were going crazy...it was so hilarious and traumatic.  Pictures:

All of the kids were pretty wound up on the bus

We think the shark was already injured.  It had been on someone's line, but got loose, and so it was just chillin swimming around getting caught in the waves.

All of my students were outraged at the injustice!

That was a very intense way to start the trip.  After a little more beach time, we headed to the ferry dock.  We waited for like an hour to get on the ferry.  The ferry ride was hilarious because tons of our kids got super sick!  But they were idiots because we told them if they wanted to not be sick, to sit up top and look at the horizon but they were all playing on their devices on the lower deck and then throwing up.  We had like 15 kids throw up.  The best one was up top this one kid who is normally crazy was looking literally green.  We asked him "how are you feeling, Jimmy?" and he just said "Bad.  Very bad."  It was pretty sad but I couldn't stop laughing.

Michael Kornelis (one of the other teacher chaperones who I got a lot of my pics from) with a student being awesome

A bunch of our students sick and passed out downstairs on the ferry

Up top on the ferry, Kornelis and Favaro, the two guy teacher chaperones.  Me and Natalie were sitting on the benches staring strait at the horizon so we wouldn't get sick

 Once we got there we had an orientation and then the chaperones had to do a swim test in the freezing water!!  I think that was the worst part of the entire trip.  The water was SO cold I couldn't breathe.  The other chaperones just jumped out and started swimming and I thought I was going to die.  But I did it!  Even though I had to hold on and ride the lifeguard's kayak back in to shore because the current was pulling me out. 

The beach on Catalina.  It was cold and overcast the whole time we were there.  Brrrrr!

We are champions. About to jump in the water.  It was so cold!  Even remembering it now makes me shiver.

After our test we split up to be with different groups of students.  I was with a group that did a squid dissection, then had some classes to learn about sea animals.  They had already learned a lot of the material in my class so I was pretty proud when they knew a lot of the information before their teacher even said it.  It was fun.  But it also made me mad when they didn't know something, because we had just covered it.  Ugh dumb kids.

After that we had dinner and then had a campfire and we were supposed to do another activity but it felt like the longest day ever so we turned in early, at like 9:00.  We made all our kids have lights out by 9:30 since everyone was so tired.

The next day was a full day of activities.  I can't remember the order that we did things.  We had a game, we kayaked which was funny because the kids are so ridiculous, we did a small hike (gorgeous views), some skit practice for their skits that evening, and we got to go snorkeling!  Apparently right there on Catalina island is one of the top 10 snorkeling spots in the world.  It was pretty cool but I was too scared to swim down and look at stuff under rocks and everything.  The kids said they saw a huge manta ray but I missed it.  Earlier groups had seen some sharks but we didn't see any.  It was still pretty awesome though, I was loving it.  It took forever to get all the kids fitted in wet suits, and then we had one kid who couldn't swim so he had a panic attack, and our group leader got a leg cramp and had to go back to shore, and one kid got a leg cramp, but other than that it went smoothly ;)

Listening for instructions for the game

Learning about birds we were going to see kayaking

One of our groups on a hike

Natalie and Favaro making a student feel uncomfortable by eating weirdly close to him

Me and Natalie's group

Different view

Group "O"

Pretty!  But cold...

Candid shot

Snorkel time!  Our group leader (in the middle) was useless

Skits after dinner!  Most of the skits were really stupid, but this one was super clever

After skits we learned about pollution, then had a closing campfire and called it a night.  A lot of the other schools there were being jerks so Michael told one kid he would kick his *** if his big group didn't change their attitude.  It was super intense and awkward, all the kids were so scared in front of us, but I was pretty proud of Michael for laying down the law.  Some kids these days really have no respect for people, so it was good to shake them a little bit.  I sometimes wish I had the ability to scare kids like that.

The next day we were supposed to go kayaking again in the morning but our kids were idiots and took forever cleaning out their cabin so we missed the fun.  We did go on another hike before lining up to get on the ferry.  The ride back was much smoother than the ride there.  One of the boat workers seemed to be hitting on me a little bit which the kids loved and were totally obsessed with talking about that for the entire ride.  He showed me how to tie some knots which I totally zoned out during his lecture so then he told me to try and I couldn't do it haha.  Good thing one of my favorite students stepped in and took over tying the knots so I could escape.  He's the best!

One of our kids just hiking by himself.  Poor guy...but honestly he was probably having the time of his life

On the ferry on the way back.  The student on the left is the knot life saver.

Michael sharing a really special moment with a student

We made it back to the dock and piled on the bus and headed on our way!  We stopped at in-n-out in Palm Springs for dinner and Natalie told the kids they only had half an hour to buy food and eat, so all the kids were crazy rushing.  It was pretty funny because I was rushing too and threw away like all my fries.  Natalie was like "of course that rule wasn't for you, you're an adult" and I was like oh yeah.  I'm just so good at following directions.  Shows how we probably shouldn't have been trusted being in charge of all these kids, but it turned out alright.  Lots of kids were grabbing handfuls of french fries to eat as they walked back to the bus, I was laughing pretty hard at their frantic-ness.

We got back to school at 10:15, all the kids were gone by 10:30.  I got home close to 11 and had the best night's sleep ever!  All in all a fun trip, we'll see if I agree to do it again next year :)