American School of Doha - Adventure Race and White Water Rafting

Today we went and did some white water rafting and a puzzling adventure race between all of our groups at camp.  It was lots of fun! And as you can see by the size of this page, we did a lot! 

First we got all of our gear ready  and were prepared to go into a car that would take us to a river that would begin our first experience (or for at least to some of us) into white water rafting. We were instructed and guided into the safeties of water rafting and were ready to get into the water. There were multiple types of waves that were exciting and sometimes quite scary. So glad I followed the instructor’s instructions. There were class 3 rapids that were incredibly fast, and the scale goes to a 5! I am glad that we did this experience, because I enjoyed working with my team mates to reach the distance together and to guide ourselves through the very strengths of the river. For those worried parents, no one was injured.

 Afterward we did the quite puzzling, and somewhat frustrating, adventure race. This race was a set of incredibly puzzling tests, that pushed our brains to the limit. In the beginning we did a puzzle involving a rope, that was tied into a knot and was confusing to get both your hands out of (this is because your hand were inside two holes in the rope). Now I’m not going to lie, this was extremely puzzling for some groups, at least mine. After that very hard puzzle we had another test in which we needed to get a tennis ball through as set of pipes, we couldn’t stop it nor make it fall, or else it was a restart. Simple puzzle. Afterwards we had to cross a rope that was tied so that the whole team had to go over it. So simple, but some kids are shorter than others. If you touched the rope, it was a restart, yay…Anyways after we were done, we had to hardboiled an egg in an outdoor fire, in this task there is a lot of patience and obviously be able to make a fire, my team had a “hardboiled” egg.

The fourth test was one that only 1 team got to win (Editor's note: Only 1 team was able to complete this challenge). There is a ping pong ball under a pipe, covered underneath, in which you have to pour liquid into it to make it go up so that one of the team members could catch it. The catch was there were holes on the pipe.

Finally, this is were the adventure race comes into place. We were supposed to make a raft out of only about 6 to 7 wood boards, a rope, and three tire pipes (Editor's Note: inner tubes). We got only four people rowing and we had 30 minutes to finish. Some teams got incredibly good results and some teams let’s say tried. But in the end I will never forget this experience and I will definitely miss being in the outdoors.

Todays post was written by: Hjalmar.