Beach Trip

   My high school takes a traditional field trip out to the beach close to the beginning of each school year.  It was actually a little late this year, as this is the start of the fourth week of our school year.
   There are four main events that make it on to the schedule each and every year.  The first of these events is a tug-of-war competition between focus classes (basically our school's version of homerooms).  For the first time in my four year attendance at the school, my focus won a round!  We didn't win our second round, but it didn't really matter.  That success was fabulous.  And it wasn't a few moments after we won that we found out that at least three of our focus members hadn't realized we were going.
   The second event is lunch.  It may not seem like much of an event, but trust me, everybody loves lunch.  Friends come together and just have fun.  After I was done eating my lunch, I just laid myself down on the sand.  After a couple of minutes, a little sand was thrown on my legs.  This led to some of my friends asking for permission to bury me.  "Fine."  And so I was buried during lunch.  Somehow, I actually attracted a bit of a crowd.  The vice-principal even came over to take pictures of my head sticking out of the sand.  Some people decided I needed to be made into a mermaid, but there was quite a bit of sand flying just a little too close to my face for my comfort, so before it could be done, I got up out of the sand.  For someone who was buried, I came out of the ground rather clean.
   Next is the sand-castle contest.  Well, I say castle, but it's more structure.  When I was a freshman, (three years ago, can you believe that!?) our focus made a Mario Kart sculpture.  A few of us freshmen were sat down and then covered by large mounds that were sculpted into the karts.  I was Luigi.  It was actually kinda fun being buried, stuck, unable to move for about an hour.
   Two years ago, our focus buried the then-freshmen in a graveyard setting, where it seemed like they were coming out of the ground.  That year, my focus won the award for "best in show" for our school's sand-castle contest.  Because (due to budget cuts) we couldn't have a beach trip last year, when we made our sand-sculpture this year, we were defending champs.
  What did we do?  Quite simply, we made four freshmen sit next to each other, then buried them, and called it Mt. Freshmore, a play on the famous Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, on which the heads of four U.S. President's are carved.

  The fourth and final event is the clean-up, making sure that the beach is just as clean as it was when we arrived.  After that came the long, tired bus ride home.  While everyone was bouncing of the walls on the ride out to the beach, after a long day of activities, the bus ride home was much quieter.