My Adventure Buddy

I may or may not have fallen for my brothers complete charm and take way  too many pictures of him but my favorite thing to do is match the pictures to a quote that inspired them.  

These are some of my favorites.

Quote Reminder

Overcoming Fear in an Aussie Halloween

This week was pretty exciting since I went to a YSA camp weekend in Apollo Bay which is on the Great Ocean Road (an extremely famous coast line).  Friday started out pretty nice with it being really warm and sunny so Clare, Tim and I (who were carpooling) stopped and swam in the ocean for a few hours before heading to camp.  Once we got to camp we started setting up camp and getting the Scare Walk ready for when the others came. 

They don’t really do Halloween here, it’s more a light fad, so the Scare Walk was the extent of my Halloween activities. 

We started the walk at about 10:30 at night and we used a path that went from our camp site down to the beach.  We had people, me being one, who were strategically placed down the path to freak people out.  I got one girl really good.  :D  Once we got to the beach we then played capture the flag for a while before having to head back to camp since it was starting to rain.

The storm hit at about midnight.  And OH WOW.  It was so bad that a group of us huddled in the club house (a little shelter building at the camp site with a fire place.  It was open on one side so all it did was shelter from the rain, not the cold or wind) and played cards until 2:30 when we got in trouble.  It was massive amounts of fun though.  They had never heard of Slap Jack!  Don’t worry.  I converted them.  :D

The storm lasted all night long and after we had to get up and tie the tents down extra firmly since two blew off, our tent leaked and every time the wind blew water rained from the roof to our heads.  :D  I got about an hour and a half to two hours of sleep….

The next day we went kayaking down the river that we were camped on to the ocean which was EPIC.  I KAYAKED to the ocean.  :D  Once we made it to the surf we left our shoes and paddles on the shore and then we took the kayaks, they were sit on top, out to where the waves were and we would hop on them and ride them into shore like a body board. 

Well my motto right now is “overcoming fears” since it’s becoming a big problem in my life.  I get really fixated on little things that freak me out and I freeze up or start having panic attacks.  One of my biggest fears is being thrown into water or getting water on my face unexpectedly.  I’m fine with going in deep or jumping off the diving board or what not if I decide to do it.  However if I lose control of that I start to panic.  For example, the last time I went boating and they put me on a tube I started hyperventilating because it freaked me out that I didn’t know when I was going to get thrown. 

Anyway…. That was a long explanation to where this is going…  I was trying to face fears this weekend so they convinced me to do the kayak/body board thing which was freaking me out since the waves were throwing us all over the place.  Well I jumped on the kayak and got NAILED by this huge wave that threw me off the kayak, away from the kayak and my buddies, and into a massive pile of rocks that we didn’t know were there.  Needless to say that fear is still being worked on and now I have some epic bruises.  :D