School starts on Monday, August 27th for me. Weird things are happening. For one thing, our school got rid of homerooms. Our 1st period class is now our "homeroom." Does anyone from my school have an explanation? If so, please explain in a comment or email. For me, this came totally out of the blue.

Tuesday night was the Peer Mentoring Picnic/Pool Party; only, it wasn't a picnic because it rained. It was moved inside to the gym/cafeteria and we mentors had to be there at 3:45. The freshmen and new kids didn't get there until 5:30, which made coming early a big waste of time if you ask me. I mean, setting everything up only took like what, 15 minutes? After dinner, they were given their schedules and we led them around the high school to show them where their classes were. It was over rather quickly. There were other funny little moments but they were you-had-to-be-there types of things.

Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday was cheerleading practice. It was mostly review for things that everyone should already know. Then we "worked" on tumbling but all we really did was fall on our faces/backs/butts a lot.  Stunting-wise, we didn't accomplish much. On Friday, we had to cheer for a scrimmage (the football team "played" another school). There wasn't a winner, but we still cheered. We had to be there at 5:00 but we didn't go out on the field until 7 PM. Until then, we threw stunts up, reviewed, practiced, and wasted time etc. I even did my full-down (bases toss flyer up in the air, flyer twists around and lands in cradle position). The scrimmage was the saddest thing I've cheered for in high school; the marching band wasn't even there. Thank goodness it was over quickly. Now onto the recap of cheer camp!

My squad went to a UCA cheer camp from August 6-9th. I missed the first day because I was in California/on a plane back form CA. I got to camp after lunch on the second day. Cheer camp typically goes something like this:

6-6:30 AM – wake/get up, get dressed, and do hair/makeup/sunscreen.
7:15ish-8 AM – eat breakfast, complain about lack of sleep, and practice.
8:15-11:30 AM – work, work, WORK.
11:30 AM – lunch and more practice time.
1:30-4:30 PM – more work, obviously.
4:30 PM – dinner/practice.
6:00 PM – evaluations.
6:45 PM - camp contests.
7:15 PM – review material.
7:30 PM – awards/coaching.
9:00 PM – group activity.
Until whenever the coaches let up sleep – PRACTICE.

So basically, cheer camp is a bunch of teams from different schools coming to stay for 4 days at a college campus with unairconditioned dorms (omg, it sucked), public restroom-like bathrooms (showers... ), and plenty of stairs (try dragging your luggage up that). We spent at least 10 hours working in an open field each day. There was actually a heat warning about not doing any sort of doing physical activity outside, but there we were, running around, dancing, jumping, and sweating like pigs. The hot sun gave us all tans (ew!), but at least there was plenty of water. It was immensely tiring and we were exhausted by the end.

At camp, we learned an "Extreme Routine," a hip hop dance, more dances, cheers, sidelines, and stunts. Stunting was fun. I won't bore you with the details, but on our squad, there is only one "elite" stunt group—we were the ones who learned new stuff beyond the basic prep. Go us. However, since we only had one solid stunt group and we needed two for the Extreme Routine, we had to switch it up a bit. They put me (the experienced flyer) with the new bases and put another girl with my stunt group (the experienced bases). This was so we could have some sort of balance.

The extreme routine is a dance with extra choreography at the end (put in your own jumps, stunts etc.) and for our end pyramid, the stunt groups did side hitches to the timing of the dance. Easy, right? Apparently not. It took forever to get it right. My back (the girl who holds my ankles and catches my head/neck/shoulders if I fall) dropped me. TWICE. THE NUMBER ONE RULE IN STUNTING IS TO NEVER LET THE FLYER HIT THE GROUND. EVER. And what does she do? She drops me twice. I mean, as I started to fall, she ran away and let me hit the ground. It HURT. It wasn't just that; it was also her work ethic/bad attitude (cursing off the coaches? Who does that?). Before I say something regrettable, let me get to the point; she quit (now the squad is down to 11 people). I guess she didn't like cheerleading enough. The morning of the final competition, she got sick and was unable to perform and another girl had to back me (it went up!) and we had to change some formations. Ah well. At least we didn't screw up too bad. We already did that (as in, screwing up).

At UCA there are individual competitions called the Jump Off and the UCA All-Stars. The Jump Off is a jumping contest to see who has the best jump in the camp. For the All Stars, you have to perform the Extreme Routine, All Star cheer, and do a jump in front of the whole camp. The coaches select cheerleaders to compete and I was chosen to compete in both. Obviously, I didn't win, but it was a good experience.

Overall, cheer camp was fun. I lived (even though I got bloody scratches from people's nails and bruises from stunting), got a tan (I hate tans), and lost two pounds (I weighed myself when I got home). Even though whole squad had to do 50 push-ups as punishment for dropping a flyer, we managed to get 6-ish hours of sleep each night (approximately). When school starts, we'll have practice every day after school (except games on Fridays). I will be so exhausted . Anyone who thinks cheerleading is easy is obviously not a real cheerleader (or they could just be a cheerleader who is trying to impress you).

Good news. I'm almost done my summer reading. Just half of The Odyssey left (one day to read it!). We had to read five books this summer. In the end, I didn't even bother with notes. I never use my notes anyway, and taking notes disrupts the reading. Yay for school. Note: The California Chronicles are coming up; basically a huge monologue about my trip to California. Stay tuned for that. Comment!