Hello and welcome or welcome back to my blog!

Today I am going to be talking about my first field study with PLP! Yes despite all odds, we went on a trip! This trip was to Loon Lake. In this post, I will be reflecting on the whole experience, including photos, and a recap of all of the things we did.

The lead up

Leading up to this trip, we had to sign our lives away. We had to submit soo many forms that almost forgot to turn in one of the most important ones! We had to pack everything ourselves, and the only things that we absolutely had to bring were sleeping bags and pillows, and a towel. The rest was up to us, so it was in us if we forgot our chargers or didn’t bring enough underwear. 

 

Day 1

Before we left on the busses was probably one of the most chaotic things ever. Even more chaotic then outdoor school in grade six (we did have it all planned out so that the only things we needed to bring on the bus with us was basically nothing except something to keep us busy)! We had to fix the schedules ( then just ditched them all together, I’ll explain later) start a book creator book, deal with the candy grams, and speed eat our lunch before we had to leave. Once we all got on the bus, it was really chill, until the back of the bus started a joke where they got excited about every billboard or sign for a business we drove past. Throughout all of this I was just quietly watching Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. (Insert link to Disney plus). Once we got there, we got out of the busses, and we went down to the amphitheater. We pulled ourselves across the rope bridge, went on a walk around the property, and did a scavenger hunt. Then we went to our cabins, chilled for a bit, and then we went to the gym and played some games. We had dinner,  ( lasagna, garlic bread, Cesar salad, juice, and carrot cake) then we did event fun. 

 

Day 2

This day was slightly less chaotic. We had breakfast, and then went to our advisory groups. After we split into groups to do activities. My first one was a Humanities lesson. We learned about historical significance, and a way to determine if a thing was historically significant. The way is called a N.A.M.E chart. N.A.M.E stands for novelty, applicability, memory and effect. The second activity was wild and immersive. To get to this, we had to take the rope bridge again, but this time we raced across. We learned about different types of forts that you could build if you were ever in need of a shelter if you were lost in the woods. We split up, built shelters and then graded them. I add a shelter with Jasper. Ours fell down once but we then rebuilt it and made it better than before. Then we went back, had lunch and went to the DI (Destination Imagination) sweatbox and worked. I can’t tell you much about what we specifically did, but I can tell you that we practiced and tweaked our script a bit, made lists of what needed to be done and fooled around for a while. We then had a break for like thirty minutes, and then we had dinner. After dinner we had like an hour break before advisory, then we did evening fun before turning in for the night. Of course, my whole room stayed up until midnight or something lol. 

Day 3

Day three was one of the best days. I woke up early, showered, woke up the rest of my room ( they asked me too), attempted to wake up one of the people in my room, failed miserably, continued on with getting ready, and then realized that the person hadn’t gotten up yet, so I proceed to scream “ ###### get up it’s 7:40” (breakfast was at 7:45) . We had breakfast, went to advisory and then there was a problem with the schedule so we had a double block with Mr. Harris. We worked on our book creator books and learned about a new app called SuperimposeX. Then we had lunch and split up into groups. My group went and we played battle archery first. We decided on 8’s vs 9’s. The 9’s won, but they are massive cheaters 😮 .  We lost, but we still did really good considering we had never done it before. Then we went and played laser tag. We got these really high tech laser guns, and we once again split into 8’s vs 9’s. While the first group played, the others learned about the guns and how the system worked. It was one computer that controlled everything. The guy could give people ammo, revive people, and just flat out shut the whole game down. Through the one laser gun, he (the guy controlling the whole thing) could give us different types of weapons like rocket launchers, a concussion cannon, sniper rifles and over 50 more options. The grade 8’s won (obviously). Then we went to work on DI more, but my group and I didn’t get anything done (like usual) because we needed to build things. Then we went up to dinner, had fajitas, then we had a break before we went to advisory. After advisory we had two options for evening fun. We could either watch the gold medal game (team Canada won) or watch back to the future. I wasn’t really in the mood to do either, but my friends and I decided to watch back to the future. While the others were watching it I was watching black panther at the back (shhhhhhh don’t say anything you didn’t hear that. Nope definitely didn’t.). After a while I decided to also watch the ending, and it was really fun. There was a lot of cheering at the end. The we all “went to sleep” and stayed up really late again (you also didn’t just hear that).

Day 4

The last day. It was probably the least chaotic day of them all. We all woke up, and we all were really tired because the girls (and the nonbianary people, can’t forget about them) upstairs were goofing around all night, singing doing handstands, and watching Dance Moms. Apparently the boys in student centre north could hear them. Throughout all of this I was sound asleep because I fell asleep really late (12:00 AM). We had one last breakfast wich was waffles. We met up with our advisory groups one last time, and then we went and packed up our rooms. My room had planned ahead, so we had already packed up most of our stuff the night before. We were done fairly quickly. We then all met up (like all of PLP 8 and 9 that was there) and played a massive game of capture the flag. Of course the grade nines cheated, demanding vaccine passports and a peice of identification to cross the middle. It was really chaotic but really fun. After we went and ate lunch, boarded the busses and went home. 

 

There were quite a few things that I took away from this learning advance. The first being some practical skills. How to build a proper shelter, where the best place to do that is, different types of shelter and much more. I have learned to rely on my instincts with packing bags. We were told that we had to pack our own things. This was interesting for be because I kept on feeling like I was missing something. I packed everything I needed. I didn’t miss anything.  Loon lake allowed me to reach out with more people. Before I only sometimes talked with people like Hannah, blondie (other Hannah) Susan, Caitlyn, Kira and others. I find that now I talk with them more. Hang out in gym. In band I’ll go over to the saxophones and talk to Kira and Hannah. I also talked to some grade nines. I talk to them in gym ever so often. They were nice but also not in a jokey way. The loon lake learning advance showed me what PLP feild studies are like. It makes me excited for what we are going to do next.

 

Throughout the learning advance I also realized that you can be in a different environment and still learn the same amount or even more. I found that while at loon lake I learned things everywhere. At dinner we would share facts. At DI sweat box we would talk about different topics that normally wouldn’t be brought up (mind you we were supposed to be working). During humanities we were working in the panabode cabin, and we were doing work on the couches, and I must say we got quite a bit done. 

 

Throughout our stay at Loon Lake we were asked to complete an ebook. It is linked here.

 

 Some days I did not take photos or videos, or I took them on Snapchat, which automatically deleted them after a day. This was honestly stupid of me, but oh well.

 

If you have made it this far, thank you so much for reading 

Bye 😮