Mentor Day (and Kangaroos!)

Today was the Male Mentor Day for the year 10 boys.  It's a day for the boys and their dads (or other male mentors) to come together and engage in some fun bonding activities.  The camp that it was at is up in the Adelaide Hills, just east of town; it's a wicked nice area!  The ride there was beautiful -- all woods (or bush, as they call it) and hills, with narrow windy roads.  The best part of the ride was that I saw my first kangaroo crossing sign!  I was so excited when I saw it that Brett just kind of laughed at me; he grew up in Eastern Australia, where they have kangaroos everywhere.  It was definitely a good sign to start off the day.

When we got to the camp, it was actually pretty chilly out.  I refuse to admit that anything is cold here, preferring to laugh at the Australians complaining about 50 degrees being freezing, but I was a bit chilled today.  It was cloudy and windy, which makes for a tough combination.  There were over 100 boys and their mentors there.  As we were walking down, Brett was joking that anyone who didn't know us would think we were a father-son team, rather than a teacher and a mentor-for-the-day.  I think some of the dads did think I was a student...although I can't really blame them (I don't exactly look old).

I met up with Gregoire, and we waited around to start off the day.  It turned out to be really cool -- they had three different major activities: a low ropes course, a high ropes course, and a pilot-rescue scenario.  We started off with the low ropes, where I had plenty of Pastoral Council training flashbacks.  Then we moved onto the high ropes, which are my favorite.  On the first one, we had to climb up about 50 feet into a pine tree and then walk across the balance wires to the next tree over.  It was really fun, but my legs were definitely shaking as I crossed the wires!  Even though he's more of a friend than a "mentee", I definitely felt like a bit of a proud dad as Gregor volunteered to go first for the climbing, even though he didn't know anybody there.  The final activity was pretty involved: we had to get a pilot dummy out of a tree, construct a stretcher, and then make a pulley system to get him across a pretend chasm.  Now it was time for Boy Scout flashbacks!  I got to know this boy Tyler really well, though, as the two of us built the shelter and pulleys.  All in all, it was a really fun day!

The best part of the day, though, was on the ride home: we had just passed the kangaroo crossing sign again when I looked out the window, down into the valley.  There were wild kangaroos down there!  All excited, I told this to Brett, so he pulled over and I jumped out to go watch the kangaroos.  They were so cool!  There were 12 of them, all hopping around in a pack, just like I imagined they would.  It was definitely the highlight of my day.  And now, fittingly, I'm packing up to head to Kangaroo Island for the weekend -- where I'll be sure to see heaps more kangaroos!

Look at them all down there!