Teamwork in the Forest!!!

WOW! I must say that today will probably be the best day out of these two weeks however there will most likely be more surprises! Doing the rope course was fantastic! I really think that it helped build a lot of trust and confidence among my peers as well as for myself. Teamwork was vital in this activity. It opened the eyes of many students to see new ways of leadership by either stepping up or down as a listener or speaker. As each activity progressed, I believe a new bond was being formed. Every time there was a mistake, we would support one another. Every time there was a success, we celebrated together and faced a new challenge head on with a "clean slate." One of the goals of this activity was to get out of your comfort zone, which I saw many people do today. Even though there was a lot of fear circling around the group, I felt a lot of trust in the atmosphere. To trust people is pretty difficult to some, however I think that these activities really made us all open up and feel like a family.
To summarize what we did today:
We broke up into groups and then did little warm up activities. The first one was the "Wind in the Willow." This game was all about trust. One at a time we had to close our eyes and free fall. The others would encircle the one in the center, who has his/her eyes closed, and they would just lightly push the person around the circle. It felt strange, but fun too. I knew these people would most likely not drop me...or at least at that time I hoped so. Afterward, we had to get over a "foreign wire" which was actually a rope. The 11 people had to link and not let go, yet at the same time we had to get over the rope. It was tricky and there were many ideas, yet we ended up compromising and it turned out alright. Then we headed to through the forest and had a "bus act." More so there was a story to each activity that this was the first true one. So what we did was we had to get a board to balance and sing a song while balancing it. It was harder than it looked! Some people had to close their eyes and some could not talk. For the first task, it was a bit of a failure. Moving on though we got better. There was one activity that was pretty easy. We had to swing across from one side to another from a string and also not spill the cup of water which we had to get to the other side also. This was not quite hard so moving on. The single log. The 11 of us stood on the log and had to get in order of birthday without falling off. If you fell you were considered "blind" and then you must continue with eyes closed! A bit tricky but we did very well! There was a "pink elephant" activity where we had to lift, crawl, and push people through a set of holes. This is a bit hard to describe, but it really gave us some thoughts about when people where a bit disabled due to the RA's announcement of some people being blind, mute or both. It showed me that even though you can't be much help, you should still try to be included or not neglected, (this is what happened when we did it). Last but not least the tight rope!!! This really made us all depend on the help of one another. We could not have done this at all without a lot of teamwork and conversations. First splitting into 2 groups, we had different courses to pass. With 6 others, we had to get across a tight rope with a stick and a long rope for support; plus each other. If we fell, we had to start over!!! My feet were shaken when we finally finished, but it was such a wonderful experience! The second part was the whole group had to get across a smaller obstacle, which we did very nicely. The discussion held after was to summarize everything. Strategy, teamwork, and perseverance helped up make it though these activities! I feel a lot more comfortable now, but time seems to pass by slowly. I guess that is a good thing though, for there is a lot more of Brown, Providence, and Rhode Island to see!