September 3, 2008: Viaţa, Day Four – The Rock and the Polar Bear

Dear Friend,

Anne and I got the morning off. Our team went orienteering, which means they were learning how to use a compass. According to Jelena, this element of Viaţa was very boring, so we managed to skip out on it. This gave me some much needed time to catch up on journaling.

During lunch we had a special goodbye celebration for Ana. She’s going to Germany for a week or so. It wasn’t terribly emotional, at least not on my part. Ana got a little teary eyed, as did some in the group. Rob Thomas’ “Little Wonders[1]” was playing on loop in a nearby apartment. The group “goodbye present” to her included a Snickers bar and a can of beer, which I found somewhat amusing. Hugs all around, and soon after lunch we headed out to the rock.

Rock climbing is climbing up vertically, as opposed to hiking’s climbing up obliquely. I had never been rock climbing before this. There are two sides to the rock face we were climbing: the left being the easier (more places to easily put your foot) and the right being the harder (more opportunities for you to improvise). Since time was somewhat short, and there being plenty of people to get through, Anne and I decided to let the others go first.

My experience with the previous elements throughout the week had really pumped me up for what I was about to do. My excitement to climb a rock far outweighed my anxiety. Once I was climbing the rock, those two opposing feelings began to balance out. I took the hard right side first and understood immediately why it was considered thus. The challenge of rock climbing is to find places where you hands can support you while you find places to put your feet. This makes for very interesting body configurations I’m sure, every limb splayed out awkwardly. The adrenaline rush, though, that accompanies the entire experience is irreplaceable. You’re conquering the world when you rock climb. You are the rock master! Then at the top you wonder how you’re going to get down.

Leaning backwards at the top of something has never been in my best interest, but to get down from a huge rock one really has to trust in physics. When you rock climb (correctly) you’re harnessed to a rope that goes to the top of the rock and loops back to a person on the ground. The person on the ground belays you while you climb, and at the top helps to lower you. In order for the lowering to happen, however, the climber must straighten his/her legs, spread them shoulder length apart, and lean back. The person on the ground then lowers you as you walk your way down the rock face. This takes some getting used to (I suggest using the restroom before any of this) but it works like a charm. After I leaned back I had no doubt in my mind that the person belaying me had a hold of me.

This entire week has been an exercise in building, among other things, trust, which is a major part of social capital. I’ve realized that even I, a free thinking college student from the United States, can be challenged to trust. It was certainly a life or death moment at the top of the rock face and twice I had to put my life in the hands of someone I had met only a couple days ago, first George (met him at the airport, remember?) and then Ana. I only hope the others in the group can realize this.

Supper was a traditional Romanian dish. It comprised of meat wrapped up in cabbage and cooked. From a distance it actually looked like baklava (the cream drizzle confused me) and I wondered why we were having dessert so soon after our soup. The meal turned out to be rather tasty. There’s one traditional Romanian dish down.

Wednesday nights are designated as debriefing nights, so after supper the seven of us joined Daniel, Janelle, and Dana in the cabană. Daniel laid out some laminated magazine cutouts for us to choose from. The picture we chose was supposed to somehow help us interpret to the rest of the group how we were feeling up to this point in the week. It was a cool idea, but it took forever for me to find a picture. I joked that none of the pictures were bonding with my Zen, that I wasn’t feeling any particular vibes from a specific picture. I finally settled on a small cutout of what could’ve been from a National Geographics issue. It was actually two pictures. The top showed a polar bear on an ice block looking at water full of swimming walruses. The bottom picture showed the polar bear getting into the water with the walruses. I waited until the end to explain my picture because I was processing as the others took their turns. When it was finally my turn to go, I dove into what I knew would be a pretty intense explanation, which went something like this:

I am the polar bear sitting on my ice block. I look out into the water and I see a bunch of walruses, things that are not like me. I could choose to jump in and swim with the walruses or choose to stay on my ice block, which for all I know could eventually melt. However, what will happen if I get into the water? Do walruses like polar bears? Do they speak the same language? If not, how will we communicate? Will I survive? The water itself doesn’t even look that safe. It’s a little choppy and it looks like a storm might be coming. In the bottom picture I am in the water, whether by choice or not. What am I supposed to do now? I wish I would’ve chosen more often this week to go into the water instead of waiting on my ice block.

Much more was said, because I babble a lot, but that’s the gist. The idea of the whole exercise, again, was to help communicate to the others what was going on with each of us. Daniel would periodically ask how we all might help each other achieve our individual goals or rise above individual inhibitions. The debriefing went well. I was getting rather tired near the end, so I turned in soon after it was all over.

Tomorrow we will all go hiking up to Straja Peak, a goal that had been set earlier in the week. I can’t see any major deterrents, especially with all the hiking we’ve done so far. The whole thing is rather exciting to me. I’ve been waiting for this since we got here. Talk to you later, friend.

Noapte bună (Good night.)
Kailen

[1] Rob Thomas’ “Little Wonders” was a song featured at the end of Disney’s Meet the Robinsons and is, in my opinion, a considerable emotional and sentimental song.