girls camp.

I need to confess right up front that I was not always at my personal best during the girls camps of my youth. My parents being aware of this, after being informed by ward leadership, were quite surprised when I decided I wanted to hold a girls camp for our ward. 

They weren't nearly as surprised as I was. Camping is essentially voluntarily being homeless. I do it occasionally so my children will realize how horrible being homeless would be and value their education. 

As one of two English speaking wards in Thailand, our boundaries are sprawling. Two or our young women travel over two hours to go to church and most travel at least hour. I've never attempted to count the nationalities in our ward, but just in our young women's we boast eight nationalities. They all go to different schools and live all throughout the Bangkok area. I really wanted to create a time when they could be together, outside the city. 

I brought all ten girls back alive and I consider this a success. And I've decided this makes me an adult. 

I made sure everyone followed all safety requirements. Most importantly seat belts.

 We started off with some spelunking. Just your normal girls camp activity.

Then we watched the bats leave their cave.  The ribboned out like this for over thirty minutes. It was beautiful. We were told over 3 million bats live in this cave.

This will be my fourth trip to Khao Yai and I have yet to see any wild elephants. Rocky took the young men here last year and almost rear ended a family of elephants walking up the road.

 We did see loads of elephant poop.

 A hike is an essential part of girls camp. I had already taken my kids on the little hikes around the visitors center and it's April in Thailand, so the waterfalls are barely running.

I found a 6 k hike I wanted to do but I was having some difficulty finding the trail head. I ran over to the visitor's center to ask directions and was told I needed a guide to do this hike. I used my most confident voice and informed them, "It's okay. I'm good guide. I was born in the mountains." This did not persuade them in my favor and they continued to repeat that I needed a guide for that hike. After failing to convince them I was an adequate guide, I asked, "If I had a guide, where would I start the hike." They looked at my suspiciously and pointed to a spot on the map.

Turns out a guide for this hike would have been nice. We walked off the trail head and immediately got lost.  There was no maintained trail--just a lot of jungle. There were pink ribbons tied to the trees every 20 meters or so. If we got lost or if a tree that was too big to climb over had fallen in our way, we would try different paths until we found the pink ribbon, then we would continue on our way.

I feel there are some really good object lessons to be gained from this.

 Once again safety was king.

I was tracking our progress and it took us about 8 kilometers to finally get out of the jungle. We made it out but not before a few of us got attacked by bees the size of silver dollars. I got my first bee sting of my life. Not a fan.

 Once again, no animals at the animal observation tower.

We celebrated our jungle survival with the American classic, s'mores. Which are so much better with dark chocolate digestives.

 Here are three girls trying the first s'more of their life:

 They've just peaked food-wise. It's all down hill from here.

And we finished off with a girls camp craft of henna.

Any success that came out of this camp was due to the amazing young women that came with us. After I finished up a quick orientation, going over the schedule and giving out t shirts, I realized I hadn't given them any rules. I didn't need to. They are just such great girls--someday maybe I will be as mature as them.