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| The StandOut group! |
Last weekend I went to the StandOut retreat in Roanoke, Virginia. The retreat was hosted by Miss USA 2005 Chelsea Cooley and A.T. Dunn. It was so much fun meeting and hanging out with all of the other girls there! I made so many new friends and it was great to get to know them before Nationals. Chelsea and A.T. taught us so much and treated us to so many fun activities!
The first day I got to StandOut we went roller skating! What a blast! It was fun to skate around and then play hockey after we got the hang of skating. Not very many of us knew how to skate, but we had a great time learning how to skate and trying not to fall! The next day they woke us up early and we got to go skiing and snowboarding that morning! I haven’t skied in so long, and was very excited to do it again! I even tried snowboarding. After our long morning of hitting the slopes we went back to the camp and did some competitive courses. First I did the hanging rope course, and I was the first one to finish the course in my time of 3:09! Next I climbed a rock wall, and after climbing to the top we got to zip-line all of the way down!J I loved it all! Finally it was time for the last course. It involved climbing up a 40 foot telephone pole, standing on the top, then jumping off and trying to catch a trapeze bar! What a challenge!! I was so eager to do it I volunteered to go first. When I got to the very top, A.T. told me that in all of the years they did this no one who went first out of the group had ever caught the trapeze bar. The pressure was on. They counted down 3...2...1...I jumped…and caught it!! It was so exciting to achieve that!J Later that night after dinner, just us teens got to go to our own bonfire! It was great to get to stay up late and talk to all of the other teens!
It was an amazing weekend and I was so happy to be a part of it! The last day we were there it ended up snowing! The snow was great except for the fact that it cancelled my flight for that day! So we rescheduled our flights for the next day (Monday). Everything was going fine - we were up in the air and headed home. Then I noticed a sort of whip lash I was getting from the jerking of the plane. They came on the loud speakers and said that we had to go back to Roanoke and land because one of the propellers wasn’t reaching full capacity. That was probably one of the scariest things of my life! We landed safe and sound, but it was definitely a scare. It also postponed our arrival home another day, which was great because it gave me an extra day to spend with my Vanbros sisters. That Tuesday we finally made it back! I was glad to be home, but already missed all of the new friends I had made!
