Northern Lights!

I (Mazlin) woke up at 7:00 this morning and woke up three of the other girls in my tent — afterwards I went to the kitchen area and made myself some tea. Around 8:30 AM was breakfast: Jill and others made pancakes (filled with strawberries and pineapples) and two different kinds of sausages. At 9:00 AM, I started getting “field ready” and got my stuff together (sadly, spent 20 minutes looking for rope). About 9:30/9:40 AM, everyone was ready, and we were waiting at the north gate — we got everything together and headed out to the field. 10:20 AM, we stood outside of Nester 1 for a little while as Fletcher and Jill navigated through the mud and made sure everything was ok to walk through. Around twenty-ish minutes, they gave us a signal that it was alright to go through, so we did. We walked through knee-deep water, which slowed us down. Greg, who was leading us through the field, did a very good job!! Around 11:00 AM, we made it to the first site, E-1, which was a fox den. We finished around 12:30 and had one more site to go, which Tommy led us to. He took us through some pretty deep waters, which was hilarious but also not at the same time. I (Mazlin) got one of my legs knee-deep stuck in some mud but managed to get out with some help from others. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing.

Our camp management group was Julie, Jose, Divine, and me (Lauren). The rest of the group was only doing a half day in the field, so we had just a little bit of time to get a lot done. I (Lauren) started with a shower, and then Julie had me make sure that all of the tents were staked down tightly. Then we all worked on getting the old tents put away to throw out. Then we started getting lunch for the rest of the group ready. We reheated the shrimp, chicken, pasta alfredo, made some KD (Kraft Dinner), and heated water for Mr. Noodles. Then we started making cookies for dessert. That was really fun because we all started eating the cookie dough. After the rest of the group got back, we had lunch and hung out for a while. Then we did some group work for around an hour. I (Lauren) worked on the letter to the future Nester 1 ISAMR kids. 

After that, we all packed for chopper day tomorrow before Arctic Night. Arctic Night is when we all have food that celebrates traditional culture. We had fish, pulled goose, and moose for dinner. It was amazing. After dinner, we had round 2 of ISAMR Olympics. Today we did volleyball! Unfortunately, my team lost both of our games, but we played hard and had a lot of fun! Right before bed, someone spotted the NORTHERN LIGHTS!!! So we all stayed up and took a lot of pictures. It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for me, and I was so amazed. We also saw some shooting stars, and we made wishes on them. Unfortunately we had to go to sleep because it was late, so we had to stop our stargazing and go to sleep for the night.

Goodnight! - Lauren & Mazlin