Saturday.
I moved into my dorm. It went well. My ma, her boyfriend and I took two chariots, My Cherokee, and his friends truck. We arrived at Wentworth around 9:45am I said a few hello’s and I checked in. When I checked in I was given a binder and a few things including my new ID and key. We then began bringing stuff up to my room a little before noon we finished and then drove to Stop and Shop to park so we could go to this good Diner that I knew of in Brigham Circle. We Ordered food, I got the Cheese omelette My ma got a Western Omelette and he got a 2 egg meal. All the food was real good. My mother and I headed back to my dorm to unpack my things while he headed home. We unpacked most of my things within a couple hours and then My ma headed home and I only had my electronics to unpack.While Unpacking I had seen a friend of mine so of course I yelled out the window to him. I said goodbye to my ma and she drove my chariot home.
I set up all my electronics, mainly my computers. Once everything was nice and hooked up I came to the discovery of my lack of Internet; This was quite annoying. I relaxed for a while and then in the hallway I heard my friend Seng looking for me so I opened the door found him and let him in. He will be staying with me throught Opening week and most of O-Staff Training. While Looking out the window I saw a friend known as the Iron_Possum. He is a pretty cool guy, I met him last year during the first O-Staff meetings. So of course I yelled out and eventually headed down to help him move in. He was with his friend Rob so the three of us, soon joined by Ben(the one I saw earlier) helped the Possum move in.Once all his stuff was in his room it was almost time for the Opening BBQ. We headed over to 610 to join the Barbeque. I began seeing many of my friends from my last year at college, of course all the ones I was seeing were ones who had joined some type of student leader program. There was the pcable, Pooler, Keeks, Jaime, Janet, And many others (I could go on for quite a while). After a bit of eating and talking to many great people the announcements by the Staff began, we soon moved indoors for discussions about the coming weeks of training. After the discussions we were put into groups, the groups in which we would be in during the centralized training. We also had to choose a group name, we chose “The Pirates”…YARRRRRRRRR MATEY!…oops sorry you’ll understand that later in the blog. Anywho, we were given a few handouts and some Ice cream! and then it was time to head back to the dorms and pack so we could be ready for camp the next day!.  After packing and getting situated I did a few more things including begin a new layout design for my website. I then called it a night, it had been a long day.

Sunday.
I woke up made sure I had everything I would need packed, and then headed out to the cafeteria with my stuff tog et some breakfast. I sat with a few of my friends, Dominic Steve and a few others. While we were eaing they began having each team yell out their team name along with the theme [the theme was “Not Your Average ____”, The Teams consisted of Awesome, Beavers, Refrigerators, and 2 others that escape me currently. Then of course our name was  Not Your Average Pirates!:-D, heh I’ve never been much of a pirate guy but that was sure to change this week.

We headed off to the bus and it was time to begin the trip to camp. Because of the amount of people going there were two buses (Quality style with TVs!) Iron Possum and myself got on the second bus. Thus began our 3 hour Ride to Peru…Massachusetts, who knew:-p.  On the way there Possum and I shot the shit with a few others and laughed at people singing to themselves and we then began watching this Vietnam war movie called Rescue…What a comedy that turned out to be. IMDB it for the plot and then add in bad acting and a bad script it was great:-p.

After that movie we started watching Time Cop, and not too much longer after, we arrived at camp, just as the full fronta female scene finished. It was time to unload the buses and pick a bunk in a cabin, and maybe grab some snacks, that were in a pavilion nearby :-p.

I was in Bunk 2A with Steve, Nick S., Eric M., Seng, Jolda, and Ben W. What an awesome bunk.

So much happened at camp so i think i will just detail events and less transitions.

We then did this massive circle Ice breaker (There was about a hundred+, 95 students +12 or so pro staff, or so of us there and we were all doing it), one consisted of saying your name and an action (while portraying said action) that began with the first letter then your name again. For example If I were to say Animalistic it would I’m Animalistic Aiming Animalistic (and when I said Aiming I would act like I’m holding a sniper rifle and making and aiming motion.) That took us  a little while to complete. We then Played train wreck, this consists of someone being in the middle and saying something about themselves and whoever identifies with that runs into the circle and then tries to find a new spot to stand, whoever remains takes control, however if the middle person pleases they can call trainwreck and everyone has to run. We played this for a while and it was quite fun. Near the end me and an Echo to infinity ran into eachother forcing my fist into muy throat and his arm got scratched up, neither of us fell and we both made it to a spot. After that we all sat down and filled out a piece of paper with our name on it, and it was collected shuffled and then we were each called up to see a name. We then found out that they would be someone we would construct a gift for (I got someone named Nick Lambros). After that It was dinner time and at each meal the name cards were always randomly placed for the duration of camp so we could meet people we may not normally meet.  Each dinner had different things but they were generally pretty good; currently I cannot recollect what we ate this night. After Dinner There was another activity, however I cant remember which  activity it was. Not much else went on that night, except for a few games here and there.

Monday

Woke up at 7 by radio by some odd song:-p thanks Jo. and went to breakfast. Cereal, and Yogurt YAY, some breakfasts we even got other stuff, but this was the main thing. We then headed outside to the field below the cafeteria. For some team builing excercizes. So I got back together with the Pirates YARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. These activites consisted of trusting your group no matter what. The first team builder was  the group spread out an arms width apart and then one member would be in the middle, close their eyes, and run straight, a team mate would then grab his arm as he came close tell him that he had him and then spin him back to the circle. The pirates split in two because these excercizes wanted 7-8people. One activity had one person stand and close their eyes , and the other 7 wouldform a line one person at the head and the other six paired off one for the legs one for the mid and one for the torso. The person would then sayy falling and the spotters would say fall on, then they would carry the person around raising, lifting, and moving as one, under the instruction of whoever was at the head. It was a trip. Also we did one with the person standing in the middle and they would be gently pushed asround in a circle by their team mates, to show that they can trust their team mates to support them.

It was then time for the Low ropes course. Another team building thing. Low ropes are a series of activites where for the most part ropes are involved. One activity was climbing a rope ladder at a 45º angle, which s difficult considering how much it shakes, the rest of the team would be spotters on the side druing this.  It went well. Next we did this thing
where there were two pillars, one about 1.5 ft off the ground and the other 3ft off the ground. The group lined up, in 2 lines, in front of these between two trees. A volunteer went up, and everyone stretched out their arms and interlocked them like zippers the volunteer would stand on a pillar and jump. They would jump towards this trapeze thing that was about 10 ft away, they generally wouldn’t touch it and tehy are not supposed to grab it. When they dived for it the group would then catch them, to build trust. After that we went to this one where a steel wire went from one tree to another, and then from that tree to a third (it continued further but that informations is not pertinent. The first section was longer then the second, however there was a tree nearby about 5/8ths of the way. The goal of this excercize was to have everyone cross it linked together, so one person gets on and holds the tree for balance, then the next person get son and holds the tree and teh second person, the first person only holds the second, and so on. So we tried a few different maneuvers like everyone facing different ways and changing the assortments of sizes of people, height wise. We ended up getting it pretty ewell, i was second fom last (after Cody, before Seng), which was good because of my arm span, we used that tree that was part way in for support. After me was Seng, i had decent balance and that way Seng and I could support eachother. The next event consisted of a 30ft steel cable between two trees and four ropes evenly distributed hanging above it. On this one two people go at once, on at each side. They must keep their eyes closed and cross, using only the ropes as support, you each get 6 spotters. I went with Rob. It was tought going so far holding onto only one rope and trying to balance, worst off my legs were shaking the rope making it difficult for Rob. When we meet in the middle I leaned forward and stepped around while he leaned back and stepped around.  We eventaully even got a Staff member to do it, she had some problems but she made it. ONLY 2 More to go. After that set we went to this one wear a long block of wood was suspeneded by cables, balance beam of sorts. This time 2 people would walk on it and attempt to pass eachother with open eyes I believe. I attempted this one but it shook too much for me, so I sat this one out and just spotted. Last event was this web of ropes. The cahllenge was passing people through the holes to the other side, only designated people could talk (designated by the person in charge, sometimes no one could talk. Certain holes could only be gone through once, and if someone touched the side of another hole at any point they were “dead” (electric fence) and that hole was now closed off. All of these activities were fun. Then it was lunch time. YAY GRILLED CHEESE and Tomato Soup. Apparently thee 100+ of us ate over 400 grilled cheese sandwiches…I think that was a tad exagerrated.

Lunch was good. I sat with another group of people today. Over the week I sat with a few bunches of people. Most of the time one or two people were with me for a couple times. I talked to a couple of the RD’s a good portion and some of the other staff, I also met more people, like Justin V. Jess M, Adrian, and a few others who’s faces I know but not names. After Lunch. we did some work on a skit. I believe the skits were given out at this point. We had to do a skit on Not your average day in the Community Standards Board.

First off you need to know what the Community Standards Board is. When someone violates the rules in the Res Halls (Dorms) They have to have a meeting with the Resident Director for that building, depending on the severity of the action they can choose to go up against the Community Standards Board (CSB), which is made up of students, and the CSB can give a penalty for the defendant’s actions, or even clear them of the transgression, think of it like going to trial.
We ended up deciding that the skit would be  a trial that The CSB is hearing which would consist of one Dorm taking over another, and since our group was pirates we had the dorm that was pillaging be referred to as Pirates.

After an hour of that we went into a session discussing our Meyers Briggs Type Indicator. We discussed the meanings of all the types for about an hour and a half. we then had free time until about 6PM which was dinner time.

For the free time I went back to my room for a relaxing break, and to think of an Idea for my nature gift, so I went back to my Bunk in Bunk 2A BOO YEA:-p. Then at almost 5 I as well as steve headed to the beach on the lake to join many people there. We get their and the Giant Canvas water slide is up and running so of course we went on that, that was very fun. Of Course Matt W. was there with his camera, so we got some good action shots, Oh and Dejan was wearing a Speedo…Europeans:-p. Anyway soon thereafter it was dinner time so we changed up and got ourselves food.

The Dorm that got taken over was Baker, and the dorm doing all the bad things would be Tudbury, AKA The Black Tud. It starts off with the CSB begin to read the details of the upcoming trial and just become confused because of all the odd details. Both dorms are Freshman Dorms. The Baker Plaintiffs then enter to tell their side of the story. The First Story was Rob’s. Rob Was attacked and tattooed his two bluejays were turned into dolphins and YARRRRRRRR! was marked on his chest.  One story was of how the Pirates of The Black Tud, stole one girl’s entire foreign Alcohol collection, which was bad, and then on top of that You aren’t supposed to have it in the beginning, so she’ll be seeing the CSB later. Next came Seng, Seng is a commuter who the Black Tud capture locked in a closet and forced him to drink her entire Alcohol collectionm then followed by the phrase “You don’t want to see what that floor looked liked.” Then came Nick was up. Nick was wearing a dress. Nick came up to tell how The Black Tud stole all of his dresses, which he wears only on certain nights, like the weekends and Friday, and Tuesday+Thursday, and sometimes Mondays and Wednesdays, and on top of that all the pirates left him was the ugly dress he was currently wearing (Boy was it funny seeing Nick S. in a dress). Then there was Dejan, Dejan had his entire collection of Speedo’s stolen. He is from continental Europe where speedo bathing suits are the main thing. He pretended to be really sad and told a story how in Europe you get your first speedo when you are born. It was a real sob story.

The CSB Then called in the Pirates. I came in with a toy plastic gun and a cardboard+aluminum sword and another with a plastic six shooter, We all ran in screaming YARRR. The CSB repeated all the things we’ve done and we cheered YARRR after each one, after the Speedo one The CSB then responded to the Pirates by asking them if they were wearing the Speedo’s right now…we all responded with (in an admittance tone) “YArrrrr”. At this point EVERYONE was laughing. It was great. My Rebuttle to the CSB was “They be very comfy.” So they then asked if we just admitted to all these horrible things, I answered for us with a YARR, but We did it in reponse to them stealing all of our Trash buckets (which baker is notorious for doing to Evans Way/Tudbury all the time in real life). Slightly shocked at all the reparations we took towards baker for Stealing our bins, but then they thought back and revealed that they all once lived in tudbury and remembered how much they hated it when the Baker people stole their trash cans. The CSB then slipped on their red bandanas and sided with the Pirates for the win of the trial:). It was great. The rest of the skits were great and there were some celebrity appearances: like “Janet Reno” and “Flavor Flav” :-p. Haha good stuff.

After this was free time, and then a camp fire to bring the night to a close, but first Steve, and I went towards the woods back near the bunks to build our nature gifts. I found some sort of ring made out of a stem of a plant laying on the ground, and since no one claimed it, it was perfect for my nature gift. I built a Basketball hoop out of that, reeds/grass as netting, and a small block of wood as a backboard. Nick G, soon joined us in our attempt at gifts. As it got darker we ended up sitting on a rock working in the moonlight, and whatever light was near. We were soon joined by Allison R., and people continued to walk by, like Melissa and a few others. We finished around 9:30 and Steve and I decided to head over to the camp fire to join the group. Everyone was relaxing and hanging out, some were standing around the fire singing sonds, it was very funny because half way through each song no one knew the words. good times. around 11 everyone had almost headed back, we were cleaining up. There were some games of Mafia going on (card game depending on which card you got decided whether or not you were a townsperson, a Mafioso, Doctor, or snitch. It was fun, some rivalries were made. But it was all in good fun.:) It was then time to call it a night.

Tuesday

No wake up call this morning  that I can recall. Breakfast time again, and then it was time for the Team Events. there was a 3 legged race, dizzy run, egg and spoon run, balloon toss, Toilet Paper wrap up (where one team member is wrapped up in 5 rolls of Toilet Paper first group done wins), We didn’t place last in each event, however we were either 4th or 5th in most of them. It was still fun. It was here that the pirates and refridgerators became friends, we rooted eachother on. Funny occurences: During the dizzy run, in which I did successfully sprint both ways, After I had finished I went to the back of the line and kneeled (when finished each player needs to kneel) so I was kneeling, and I looked up to see the people in front of me parting, and then all I see is Salerno’s face running towards me, BOOM, we were both on our backs on the ground, laughing, it was so funny!. Another Occurence. When the refridgerators and the Pirates finished the TP wrap up we both used what training we had the first day to Lift our TP’ed guys next to eachother for a dual team picture . The sheer awesomeness of it all was great. This inspired the other groups to do the same and join us. We did not win this set of events . Lunch Time YAY. Next came something very fun, an amazing race like scavenger hunt. We got pieces of maps throughout it to find the next challenge. (challenges consisted of Getting 4 gallons of water out of a 5 gallon bucket and a 3 gallon bucket, sudoku, the pencil pyramid game, codes, word find/jumble, tangrams, and the maps pieced together to form a page with a riddle on it (I can bring a smile to your face an Idea to your mind and even a tear to your eye but you cannot see me, what am I? The answer was ………………………………………….. a memory (we got it after a couple tries. The Pirates were the first ones to the end, and we WON:-D!!!!!!!!!!!YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY . We also finished ahead of schedule    YARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!:-D:-D  So after an hour or so of free time, it was time to claim our prize. We opened the chest and in it were many rubber snakes, and movie passes for each one of us, so we could go see Snakes on a Plane!! After this we did excercises on reflection of what happened at camp. We did this one thing where we all got in a circle with our respective groups and we were given a thing of yarn. We were to toss this yarn to someone in our group and say one thing good about them.  I apparently make some people smile. this continued until we were able to make a ring out of this that connected us all together. We then made bracelets out of this yarn.  Another excercise we did was everyone at camp sat on the outer edges with their eyes closed and we each had a number (1-5) and when our number was called we would go to the center of the circle, and when todd said something we would touch everyone’s head who fit that description, i.e. “Touch a person’s head who made you smile these past few days”. That was a great exercise it made everyone happy.

Soon after it was our last dinner time, and then it was time for our trip home . The buses were a tad late showed up around 6:30 instead of 6. And there was no movie this time around, all though i did get some nice footage of someone lipsyncing to their cd player.  I let Iron_Possum listen to my box of Zenification, whilst I rested. Around 10 (when we should have been heading home, we stopped in a rest area a bit off course, because of a flat tire which later on became a blow out, we ended up having to wait for another bus to meet us in the breakdown lane, so it could take us back to campus. We in total were delayed an hour, I was quite exhausted when I returned, and of course my INTERNET WAS STILL BROKEN!

Wednesday

-late Start
-Lunch
-Centralized Training Sessions(Training for all student leaders)
-Session #1: Team builder: We drew an outline of Jolda, and then on this paper we drew representations of qualities we believed a good student leader needed, of course ours had a pirate hook.
-Session #2: Group Facilitator: We learned about Group Facilitation
-Session #3: Para-Professional: I dont really remember what this one was like.
-Session #4: Self-Developer: Self explanatory
- YAY DINNER
-This was an O-Staff exclusive session as most night ones were for me. Ice Breakers on the quad(so we can learn more about eachother, and have practice for Opening Week)
-We then had an overview of what our training would be like for the next week and a half.
-Staff Expectations

Thursday
-BREAKFAST
-Diversity Day
-Diversity day was a very interesting thing it started out with us all in an auditorium with 2 guest speakers, This day consisted of topics about how we all don’t know everyones complete background so we don’t know how certain things may affect them; basically about us making sure we are compassionate and that we choose our words carefully. We also did activites where we would split off into groups and share information about ourselves with others, each time it was a different group. We also went over the agents and victims, of prejudices, and how to deal with that. Near the end we did this thing where everyone stood in a circle; he would announce something, be it a race, a gender, a certain group membership, or something about our past or family lives. Those that felt something applied to them would step into the circle, he would have us notice who we stood with and who we didnt stand with. It was an experience, tough as well. one of the last ones, was if we felt we should’ve gone into the circle at some point but didn’t for whatever reason step in, a few of us did.  thinking back on this right now is draining me, We were all so drained after that day. it was intense. After the circle activity, they asked if people would volunteer from certain groups mentioned, so they could speak their part about coming from that background. All of the rest of us would listen , and then 2 comments afterwards would be made about specific sentences they said, so they could realize we were really listening.
-After all that It was Dinner time (Lunch happened somewhere in that day).
-Dinner was always interesting, most of us ended up sitting at this massive table we made by pushing a bunch together it was really cool.
-Only thing at night was committee meetings, and I went to my events staff meeting, where we discussed our events for opening week and some more ideas for the opening day carnival.
- by 8pm we were out for the day and back in our dorms. I still had no internet so like tuesday and wednesday night, I actually slept because currently there wasnt much else to do.

Friday
-Breakfast
-More Centralized session! WOOHOO
-Session #5 Community Builder: I believe in this one we played jeopardy about things around campus and what we woudl do in certain situations in our community.
-Session #6 Peer Advocate: if Jeopardy wasn’t the last one it was this one, otherwise this one was about how to advocate students at Wentworth, mostly Freshmen, but not necessarily.
- HOUR BREAK! YAY- I went to OIT (Office of Information Technology) so I could have them check my internet port in my room. One of the guys came wiuth me back to my dorm, inspected the ports found that none had a connection, just like I found. We then went to the networking closet, he was nice enough to let me accompany him (probably because on the way back to the dorm we exchanged some of the odd IT workorders weve gotten in the past.) Eventually we found the problem (something was slightly off axis) and YAY INTERNET. Then it was lunch time, and then CASA Sexual assault training so we could lead discussions when  the freshmen had to be informed of facts about sexual assault.
-3-5 resource fair. we learned stuff
-DINNER
-Ice breakers on the Quad-woohoo
-A welcoming from bethel, an overview of being an OA
-Overview of nighttime activities, and an Ice Breaker
(since my internet was up I could make naomi work again:))

Saturday
-Had most of the day off, but went to a commencement early on.
-A friend came up to hang out today, we went to a couple stores, hung out, began watching blade 2
-At around 7:30 she had to leave, and then Iron_Possum, GameXPlyr, Randombw, and Myself went to Uno’s for some great food.
-After that I can’t remember if I did much else other then be online.