The most painful 4 days of my life...= Min-Y-Don.

Before I begin I think it would be best to explain that Min-Y-Don is a Christian Adventure Centre - if you have ever experienced any time here, you would understand the pain that I have gone through in the past 4 days. Basically, they spend the 4 days that action teamers are there just pushing us to the limit so that we each get to know each other even better and know our strengths and weaknesses and how we can best work as a team. Sounds fun? Let me give a brief overview of my four days there:


20th - 

• failed one of the problem solving games they set us so we had a forfeit... Crawl down a muddy, stoney, holly leaf covered path ON OUR BELLIES, just using our arms to pull us along. 
• Learned grid referencing
• (10.30pm) - Got set another challenge- orienteering in the pitch black.
• Got back at midnight.. Bed.

21st-

• Spent the morning on low ropes getting covered in paint (we won though!)
• Played the smuggler game.
• Went to the dining room for dinner and got told were not getting given food, and we have 7mins to get a sleeping bag and the money we won from the smuggler game and meet our leaders outside, wearing the clothes we were standing in.
• Got taken to a random place in the woods
• Had to build a shelter from a bit of rope and a piece of tarpaulin (Ellen learnt about this in bushcraft whilst I was learning grid referencing)
• Got taken down to the lake and told that 2 people from our team had to swim out to the boat to get our dinner, so me and Ellen did that... It was freezing.
• In the bag of food we got was pasta and a tin of peaches.
• Got back to shore and Josh showed us what else we had for dinner.... Opened up a bag and inside... A dead rabbit.
• Spent the fake money we won from the orienteering in their fake shop and bought soup, tinned fruit and hot chocolate.
• Ellen skinned the rabbit (I couldn't watch!)
• Made rope out of vines from the tree to tie the shelter down.
• Made a fire.
• Stuck my hand in a bucket of crabs to get a dingbat style thing to work out (Josh put his hand in a tub of slugs, Naomi put her hand in a tube of worms and Ellen had to find one in a bucket of horse manure.)

22nd-

• (1am) Slept under the shelter .. Hardly slept and woke up covered in bites!
• Woke up at 6.30am and cleared everything up.
• Had breakfast and then made packed lunches.
• Hiked in the hills for 4 hours collecting empty ice cream tubs in various locations on a map (this is where my new found talent for grid referencing came in handy!) 
• Had no time to eat lunch.
• Got back and got told to get changed into something we don't mind getting soaking wet.
• Went out on canoes and played the captains coming game... but when they said man over board... one of us literally had to go over board. 
• Made to capsize. (freezing water)
• Got 10mins to change before having a debrief.
• Took 3hrs to warm up.
• Had 1hr off so showered.
• (9pm-ish) - Night line- Me and Ellen were blindfolded for half and Josh and Naomi were tied together all the way through and we had to follow this rope through the woods through various obstacles and stuff. Then I got unblindfolded and Josh was told he wasn't allowed to talk so I lead the way for the rest. It was pretty funny but not an easy task.
• Got to bed at 11pm - we were all pretty suspicious of the fact that we were allowed to go to bed at 11 so half of us slept in our clothes! 
• There was an alarm at 4.15am but it was just in our room and it stopped after a minute so we all went back to sleep. 

23rd-

• Crate building (towers of crates falling on you hurts)
• A lot of debriefing and team time.
• 5pm= HOME TIME! 

Happiest day ever.

I collected over 16 bruises, a fair amount of cuts and grazes, and many bites. I was so tired by the end of day one, so fell asleep pretty much instantly when we got on the coach.

I'm so happy to be back at IMC!!