Sneaking Away

 By Alia Peterson

Although it was announced on the school newsletters, the seniors were ready to sneak away. During study hall H block, all the seniors said, “I just want this day to be over already so that we can go on sneak.” We started to count down the time from 40 minutes to 30 minutes down to 10 minutes when we closed our computers and started talking because we had no work to do and just wanted to leave. Finally, the last bell of the day rang and all the seniors were excited. It was time to go home, get our bags and come back in 2 hours. But we had a long journey ahead of us to Indonesia. 

First, a 12 hour bus ride. Then, we had to wait for a couple hours before a 2 hour ferry. When we got off of the ferry, we had some amazing staff from Telunas meet us and get us on the next bus. Luckily, this was a short bus ride, only about 45 minutes this time. After the second bus, we were off to our final leg of the trip, an hour and a half boat ride where Jay Lohman said, “I want to sit in the front so that I get splashed.”

Throughout the week, we had activities planned everyday. We deck jumped, went to a village while teaching kids English and played with them, along with cement work for their bike parking, shrimping (fishing for shrimp with a spear), kampung games (games that are played in the village), our own version of The Amazing Race, survival skills (making a fire and fishing), rope courses and balancing with teams, and a bonfire with singing. My favorite activities were going to the village and the bonfire with pizza.

During our day free time, most of us were down at the beach either in the water or playing games like corn hole, volleyball, tether ball, soccer, ping pong, badminton, or a game that we made up on our own. One day, some of us were on the beach for about 2 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the afternoon. Later that night, we soon learned that we didn’t put enough sunscreen on, and the majority of us were burned. Aloe vera was being passed around and put on everyone. At night, we were playing games in the lounge.

On our way back, it was a battle against our bladder. Most of us were asleep, but we heard Auntie Claudia say “Bathroom break soon.” Everyone started talking about how bad we needed to go and as soon as the bus stopped, we sprinted to the bathroom. With 27 girls and 5 stalls, the battle began against each other and our bladders. Some of us made a back up plan of going in the shower just in case. Life lesson: don’t get Starbucks when you’re traveling for many hours.

Overall, it was a really great experience with many chances to bond with new people.