By: Isabele, Jackson, and Owen
The 8th Grade class traveled to Mt. Saint Helens as our last trip together. It was an amazing trip and a really great bonding experience. We wrote cards to each other, some about memories we had of each other and about skills that we can bring to high school. On the last night we shared the cards with one another and had a Circle of Tears; it is actually called a Value Circle where we have a prompt that we have to answer, we talk about the future and how we won't be together anymore after Westside. It usually ends up with some people crying. Thats why we call it the Circle of Tears. The cards plus the Value Circle really showed us how close the eighth grade class is and how much we care about each other.
On the first day there we hiked a trail near Mt. St. Helens which was by the river that had all the mud and trees in it when it erupted. It was called Hummocks Trail. It was about 4 miles and it was a great nature trail. It was also a great geological learning place. When we were closest to the volcano we went to a visitor center where we learned about Mt. St. Helens and when it erupted.
On Tuesday afternoon of the trip we were told by Sarah, Don, and our guide David that we were about to take part in an activity for the next 24 hours called, the Survival Challenge. We would not get any help by a teacher or guide except to be able to ask questions about what we could use. Our questions could be about anything we needed help on but we only had three. We had to cook our own meals, set up our own tarps, and build our own fires. We did the Survival Challenge to show what we had learned through our middle school experience on our camping trips. We worked together really well and remembered all of our skills that we learned with Westside.
Overall it was a really fun trip and we will always remember the memories we had. We learned how well we could cooperate with each other and how close everyone actually is. It was a huge success and Westside should continue to make the cards, Value Circle, and Survival Challenge a tradition with future 8th grade classes.
