Pisa (by Emma)

Pisa was cool. Camp Darby was awesome, but it kept reminding me of a sort of huge plush prison and that discombobulated (I love that word) me every time I was there.

FIRST DAY AND STUFF OMG

Bus to get there? One word.
HATE.
HATE HATE HATE. I never wanna see another bus ever AGAIN.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

We stopped at the leaning tower of Pisa but I didn’t go up (15 FREAKING EURO) so its not important much. And then we shopped. Then we got back on the bus.

Anyways after the bus of DOOM, we got to Camp Darby. Its this HUGE military base, but its big and open and has cabins all over and a tiny forest and a library and bathrooms and other stuff in other buildings. It was a short walk up a little hill and through the tiny mini-forest to our cabins, (our troop is BIG so we had three cabins all next to each other) where we dropped our stuff and started the long an annoying walk down to the base food court for dinner.

Which, of course, SUCKED MONKEY BUTT. I seriously think they force-fed cows to make them poop and then they sculpted and painted the poop to look like food. Blech.
That night Alyssa, Alex and I played a prank on our friend who was sleeping in another room named Melanie. We told our cabin leader (a very nice volunteer named Ms. Amber) that we were doing it so that she wouldn’t make us stop in the middle of it. That would have been no fun.

ANYWAYS. Here’s how to pull this prank, if you ever want to do it to your friends. It’s best to have a partner in this prank, just in case something goes wrong or you need a fast alibi. And because laughs are best shared with buddies.

TIP OF DOOM!!!!!!!!! if there’s someone you don’t want to be a victim but would have been in the crossfire, you can pull them over sometime and tell them what’s going on so that they aren’t scared. BUT TELL THEM TO ACT LIKE THEY ARE OR ELSE THE TRICK IS DOOMED!
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!!!!!!!!

STEP ONE. Get an iphone or some phone thing that you can set an alarm on and can lock so that the music can’t be changed.

STEP TWO. Get a charger for your chosen sound weapon. Plug your weapon into the wall with the charger and cover it up with something so it’s not obvious. MAKE SURE NOBODY SEES YOU DOING THIS! And if they do, make it inconspicuous. Tell them you’re just charging it up then turn away to end the talking.

STEP THREE. Set an alarm on it! It’s best to do this when your victim(s) is/are away, or are distracted. Set your alarm with either loud or freaky music (on an iphone the music “sci-fi” does this well) and then turn it WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY UP if your going for the alarm  of loud DOOM. If you’re going for creepy, set it just loud enough that they will wake up and be scared.

STEP FOUR. Lock your phone/ipod/music playing machine/whatever with a code so that even if your victim(s) DO/DOES find it, they can’t get at it!!

STEP FIVE. LAUGH LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER LAGUHED BEFORE AT THEIR SUFFERING. MUAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*cough cough*

DAY TWO OMG WERE ALREADY HERE

The next morning we were woken up by a BIG LOUD HORN from outside that they play to wake everybody up at SIX THIRTY IN THE MORNING.

We went down to get breakfast at the food court which of course, sucked like everything else there. But there were two things that I ate- one! They had this sort of dry muffin-donut-thing with sugar on the top, and then there was COFFEE.
COOOOOOOOOOOOFFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE NYA NYA NYA!!!!!!!!

Then we got on ANOTHER BUS (this one was a bjillion times nicer than the other one so I liked it) to go to our assigned trips that we had picked before we left, and I got trekking with Melanie! Yay! We went to the beach and to a forest, and we had fun all the way around there.
All except for one thing.
My shoes got all sandy inside from the beach since I put them on and off to put my feet all in the water, and the combo of the sand and the water and the not wanting to wear my socks since they had sand in them gave me blisters.
HORRIBLE BLISTERS.
They’re STILL HEALING right now.
Anyways when we got back we went to go get dinner (we had eaten lunch on the bus) from the crap court, and this time it was actually good. It was lasagna.
After the food court, we went back home to eat ramen and oreos (we had gone to the commissary to get food on the first day but I didn’t feel like typing it in its own section up there) and watch Bones and CSI: Miami. Then we went to bed.

Third day was lounging and eating more oreos. We had gotten some orange juice on the bus at trekking that had frozen by now, so we slushed it up and drank it.

We lounged. We played. And by played, I mean after a huge barbecue and the most awesome staring contest of my life which consisted of many marshmallows we played MAN HUNT.

RULES OF THE GAME OMG this has to be long since this is for the whole day, so bear with me, okay?

The more people the better the game is. The bigger the gaming area, ALSO the better. But if you have like a million miles of land and ten people, that would be LAME and would take FOREVER. You need at least five people to play the game, or else it will take ten seconds.
The rules are simple- one or two (if you had such a huge group as we did which consisted of about twenty huge girl scout troops the number grew rapidly) girls are chosen to be the first hunters.
 While those girls count for a set amount of time, everyone else runs and hides. (I’ll give tips on being each team later) when the counting is up, the hunters can either go their separate ways or hunt together (a common sight). If they hunt together, it’s much easier and better. It’s also good to run away in a pack- you have a girl or two to watch your back.
If you hunt in a pack, the game gets better too. It’s much easier to catch the runners, and if you catch them, usually they will join your pack and the game will get even better. Hunting or running in a pack is great if you don’t know all your players too- the teamwork required to hunt or run can gain your some friends.
If you get caught as a runner you become a hunter. It’s simple. If a new game starts, then you become a runner again unless you start as a hunter. Lots of people break up a pack when a new game begins, but if your pack is small, it’s usually normal to keep it the way it is.
Some girls are lone, meaning they run or hunt without a pack. These usually get caught first, since the lone ones are just what the hunters go for. They’re easy to surround with a large enough pack, and can’t just split up if they get chased. (often packs of  runners get lost and caught when they split up, so don’t do it all the time.) lone hunters rarely catch a thing, for obvious reasons.
If a new game is called, usually a pack of girls will go yelling around the playing field that it’s a new game, and will stop to yell in the place that you started in. if you hear this call, come to it ASAP. Tell anyone you see. NO LURING PEOPLE OUT BY FALSELY YELLING NEW GAME!!! And you’re also not allowed to like about if you’re it (a hunter) or not. If you do, you get scorned by the other players that hear about it.

GREAT TIP BEFORE I GO- breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Don’t run unless you have to. Keep your stamina as long as possible.

DAY FOUR ALREADY!?

that's the day we went home. we stopped in Florence, ate some gelato, and then we got back on the bus.
the bus of DOOM.
that was the night i fell asleep underneath the chairs of a bus for the first time.

THANKS FOR READING ALL MY STUFF!!!!!!!!!!! Bye. Now go home and eat a sandwich.

Karen says - they were originally supposed to get home at 9pm on Monday. We got a note that said they had gotten stuck in a traffic jam and would be about 2 1/2 hours late. Great. At 7:30pm, we got another note that said they were going to be arriving about 1:30am. Lovely. So, we get to the drop-off spot a little before 1:30. It was really cold. 1:30 comes and goes. As does 2. As does 2:30. They finally got in at 2:44am. Ugh.