Sounds like a horror movie, right?
Enrique, Glove Love and Samwise woke us up the next morning and told us that the sherpas and The Bush were gone for the day. Those three, as LODs, were in charge, and we were legit(imately) going to be stalked that day. Meaning if we had an emergency, the adult leaders would be there, but otherwise, we wouldn't see them until after we had finished cooking dinner. Everything - breaking down and setting up camp, cooking, pumping water, etc., was all in our hands.
After breakfast, we went into Compass Time (which ended with Glove Love calling "The noise!") and then broke down camp and set out. I was still kind of sore, but it wasn't really that bad. We travelled single file for a while, with Glove Love at the front of the line calling things back like, "OK, everyone, starting at the back of the line and moving up, tell how do you like your eggs!" or "If all of you could be a superhero, who would you be?" We sang "Sweet Caroline" on the trail, and just generally had a good time. Furthermore, it wasn't long until we reached an intersection from which we could hear motorcycles. At first the six of us (the LODs were over consulting the map by themselves) thought they were helicopters (not a good sound to hear in the mountains) but realized the true meaning of the sound shortly afterward. Our guess was confirmed when the LODs returned and we moved on, and reached a parking lot and a road!
We crossed the street (holding hands just for the heck of it), the LODs decided we were in the wrong place and we crossed the street again, and realized that they had made another mistake, so we crossed the street again, and headed up the road a bit to the start of our climb. We stopped for a couple minutes and I thought, "I know, I'll distract myself by counting as high as I can in Hebrew!" (That's pretty high, by the way.) So when we stood up, I started counting out loud, having warned no one, and Sweet n' Spazzy and The Friz turned and stared at me in astonishment, looking as if they feared for my sanity.
I broke off and said, "What?"
"You just started spouting gibberish, we thought you had lost your mind!"
"It's Hebrew!" We all cracked up and I then taught the brilliant and knowledge-hungry Friz how to count to 10 in Hebrew. Then we played free association games ("Start at 'elbows' and get to 'school'") and stuff like that. Overall, it was the easiest day of hiking, because we were pretty much used to it by then. We played tricks on the adult leaders by leaving messages for them on birch bark on the trail, because they were a ways behind us. Mostly they were just stuff like "We are watching you" and creepy pictures of eyes, but Glove Love wrote a haiku that we left for them, that goes as follows (I have it committed to memory):
the clouds are moving
mothers embrace their children
all will be destroyed
We left it on a stick in the middle of the road for them to find.
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