Mud? Water? Darkness? Tight Spaces? OH YEAH!

I finally finished up my math, and I’ve been working on English, Social Studies, and my Peru scrapbook ever since. I’m wearing my “Peru Chef” shirt today, which depicts guinea pigs jumping through a hoop and into a big kettle. It’s pretty awesome.

I went caving this weekend with a group of 23 other people. It was amazing! The people in our van were: Dad, Mr. Douglas, Summer, Jill, Lauren, Brent, Josie, Drew, Joylynn, Josh, and me. We had a round trip of 12 hours, but it went by really fast, which is always good. We left Friday afternoon, drove to the Boy Scout lodge, hung out for a couple of hours, and then hit the sack. We got up at 4:30 AM, drove to Denny’s for breakfast, and then we had a 2 hour drive to the cave. It was pretty cold outside, so once we got to the cave, I ran to the bathroom and then ran right to the cave. I definitely was not concerned about doing any dillying or dallying! The whole caving experience was absolutely awesome this year! As we were establishing groups I crawled down into this little hole that you had to belly crawl through, and I went back about 15 feet. Since there was water trickling through the hole, I was soaked and muddy by the time I got out. Wa-hoo!

About 15 minutes into the cave was another offshoot that involved lots of crawling. I got Joylynn and David to follow me on this one, which was awesome! Joylynn, (who is my cousin), absolutely loved the whole experience. She pretty much followed me wherever I went, which pretty much translates to fearlessness, which was really cool! One of the leaders asked me if she was my girlfriend! That was really funny! Hahahaha!

At the end of the cave there is this offshoot that is super muddy and has a spot where you have to just flat-out belly crawl through mud. It is spectacular! Tim, Joylynn, Ryan, Mike, and I all went on that one. Most of the time the water in the cave is knee high, but sometimes it can be waist high. So by the time I got through with the belly crawling part of this offshoot, I was soaked, super muddy, and loving every minute of it!

After we were done caving, we piled into the vans and headed back for home. The drive back was pretty fun. Josh got the death stare from a guy at Wendy’s when the guy bumped into Josh, so we almost had to throw down, but the guy apparently wasn’t interested in fighting. We could have taken him.

Josh and Joylynn both stayed over on Saturday night, which meant that they went to church with us, which was nice. Mike and I were finally able to give Josh our Christmas present, which was 2 big bottles of Jarritos. I also had to convince Josh that the linguini that we were having for lunch was actually quite good, despite what Mike and Drew said. After tasting it, he agreed with me. Joylynn ended up leaving the same time that we drove Josh home. I drove of course, and I think it was my first time driving in the old town. It was arguably the best weekend so far in 2009. Speaking of 2009 (and beyond), Josh and I laid out a couple of goals for this year. One of them is to bike from Crystal Lake all the way to my grandma’s house in Wheaton. We’re thinking about doing it as a 2 day trip. The other goal is to go camping at Starved Rock this summer. That would be awesome. We also started a bucket list! I think we have two items on that list. One is to take a trip to Thailand together, and the other is to go kayaking in the Everglades. Oh wait, we have 4 things! The other two are go kayaking down the Amazon, and go crocodile hunting in Louisiana. Yeeeeeeee-Haw!