The Shack – Day Seven – ‘RAIN’

The alarm first went off at 5:44am, but I didn’t actually make it out of my sleeping bag until about 6:10am. Deryn and I tried to stay wrapped in our sleeping bags for as long as possible. I didn’t sleep so well. It was a cold night – slept with my toque, scarf, mitts and an extra sweater. Waking up was not so lovely, it was still cold outside.Last day of work in the shack today! Rock picking. Today we’re getting paid for what we pick so our goal is to reach at least 300 pesos; more if possible but we also want to finish asap so we get the rest of the day off. Once we got to the beach we all went to town on picking out black rocks. We had to move fast to reach our goal. Sadly it was overcast so no sunshine. Figures, the one day I remember to bring sunscreen. At first we had a slow but steady pace. As it got closer to lunch time it also began to get windier and therefore colder. It even began to rain a bit. So we worked even faster. By noon we had made 305 pesos – awesome! We all packed up and headed back to drop off the rocks. After we dumped the rocks we put them at the front door of the bunkhouse to make a patio type area with all the rocks that we had collected on our two days at the beach. At this point it was raining, windy and cold. Once we finished spreading out the rocks we all ran to our shack to fix any leaks. Our shack had one main leak on the girls side and apparently multiple places on the boys’ side. We spent the afternoon huddled in the shack trying to stay warm and dry. A break in rain near dinner allowed us to make a fire and boil some water for our soup. Let’s hope we make it through our last night as dry as possible. We are looking forward to moving back into the big house across the street tomorrow morning and are aware that sadly this is a luxury that others in our neighborhood do not have to look forward to. Makes us even more grateful for a water-proof house, hot showers, a dresser full of clean, dry clothes and a pantry full of food.
Written by Emily MacIntyre, School of Leadership student