Hi there, folks!

Today for training, we had the "team building" day. We went out to Camp Williams, which is an army post a few miles west of Lehi, which for those who have never been there, is just north of Provo. It's very beautiful, being located on the foothills at the west side of the Wasatch valley. There is a big leadership training emphasis there, possibly more so than many military posts, simply on account of the BYU and U of U ROTC programs, and also the numerous youth programs that use the facility. We split into groups by hall advisor partners and their corresponding RAs. Lori wasn't there, so we had Malya (sp?), who was also extremely nice (I'm starting to see a trend here among the HAs). The main part of the training consisted of an obstacle course involving ropes, moats, and pipes mostly, with the odd oil drum and ammunition magazine. These obstacles were very tough; they were the actual things they use to train officers to problem-solve.



By the end of training, I was sore, hot, and very dirty; I had lost some blood and plenty of pride. I've always kind of viewed myself as being reasonably strong and quite good at solving problems, but I really wasn't very good at figuring out how to get past the obstacles (though none of us really were; we're RAs, not strategists), or at most of the climbing that we had to do. Almost all of the girls required a lot of help from the boys in my group. Two of them, Sean and BJ were the particularly athletic, go-getter kind of people, so they really helped our team out tremendously.



The other aspect of the training was the rappelling wall. Having never done this in my life, I thought I did decently. BJ was belaying for me, so I most likely would not have seriously injured myself or died, even if I hadn't been great. I was kind of sad, though, because I got a really cool t-shirt from the BYU Multicultural Student Services office for being a know-it-all and answering a trivial question correctly, and I kind of wrecked it. I hope Spray and Wash will do its job. See what you think--

Sorry about the camera work. ALL my muscles are shaky at this point, and I'll probably OD on the Icy Hot tomorrow. What a wimp. Anyway, they fed us AGAIN, and now I'm full, tired and have an entire afternoon to wash my know-it-all shirt, get cleaned up, and take the nap that I've been intending to take all week, but haven't gotten around to it. Ah, tender mercies.

Before I go, though, here is a picture of my group, which consists of all of my associate RAs (the ones that live right by me) and one of my associate HAs.

Starting at the very top left is Ron, Kyle, Oliver, and Sean. BJ is sort of stuck in there on the left, and then along the bottom from left to right is Lauren, Candace, Sam, Me, Megan, Emily, and Malya. It was very sunny, so it's really not very good of any of us, but it's us notwithstanding.

That's today. Until next time on TAAOA.