Field Trip to Brotas
My last field trip was in June 2005, when I was in 9th grade. About 80 studen
ts went to Brotas, a small town next to Sao Paulo. It took us 3 hours and 242km by bus. We stayed there for 3 nights and 4 days, to study the sky, the stars, the constellations and a little about the planets. The teachers responsible for us were: The Physic teachers, Mr. Tramolay and Mr. Gally; the Science teacher, Mrs Chauvel. We stayed in a sort of a camp called Peraltas (pic), from the 21st June (Tuesday) until the 24th June (Friday).
We left Sao Paulo, on Tuesday 21st June, at 8 o’clock and were supposed to reach Brotas at 11 o’clock. As always, we were a bit delayed, which made us arrive only at 12 o’clock. The trip was pretty cool, as my mates and I were planned the room we would stay in and how we would have fun. I sat next to Nicholas and with Ludovic, Hugo, Roberto, Jens, Pablo, Alex, Lucas and Cédric around us. Not to be bored, we played mimic games and threw pieces of a plastic cup in Alex’s hair, but he noticed it later however. The room would be the 10 kids mentioned above in addition to André, Stéphane, Pedro, Thomas, Philippe and the monitor called Mario, totalizing 16 people in a room.
When we arrived we went to our bedroom. I had to run and arrive first to choose the best bed; otherwise someone else would take it. The room wasn’t the best, but good enough. Though it was a bit small, we managed to adapt. It had two parts with 5 bunk beds in the first part and 4 in the other half. There were 2 bathrooms with 8 showers for 13 people: it was a fight to have a bath even if the water was the coldest I had ever felt. During our first night, while Mario was brushing his teeth, Pablo picked his deodorant and ran away. As Mario started running after him to get it back, yelling “Give me this ****, **** !!!” all the paste came out of his mouth into Thomas’ bag.
We had to wake up at 7 everyday to get dressed, have our breakfast and work in the CEU or go trecking. Both things were incredibly boring, as we had to stay 2-3 hours listening to a guy talking about the sun or walking in a forest with every kind of bugs flying around you and climbing on your body. At 12 o’clock we had lunch in the same place we used to have breakfast. If I remember well, after lunch we had 2 or 3 hours freetime to play soccer, swim, sleep, talk, walk, etc. Then we had to go back again to the CEU, now to learn about the moon, stars, planets, listen once again to the most annoying man in the world and watch a movie about the solar system. The only thing I remember about all those nights in the CEU is that there was a line to watch the moon through the microscope. Hugo, Ludovic and I decided to cut it. The man noticed it and kicked us out. It was one of the best moments of the trip. After it, we went to have dinner at 7 and went to bed at 8, to sleep at 9 pm. As we had the best monitor, he let us sleep whenever we wanted, but we had to be silent otherwise he would turn off the TV and make us sleep. The nights were much fun, mainly when Mario decided to pick Alex’s condom, put it over his head and blow it with his nose. The result is indescribable, only a picture can describe it (observe Ludovic’s head on the right side of the photo).
We played soccer everyday in the afternoon on a nice soccer field, which was large enough for 22 players. The game’s length was about 1 or 2 hours, depending on the weather. There were some players from Peraltas beside the Lycee players. We played in the gym too, which had volley, soccer and basketball fields. In the room, we used to talk a lot. I told my friends about my funny discussions that I had with my mother, we watched movies on TV (Kill Bill, the worst film ever), we played poker, we listened to music, we had a lot of fun, it was amazing. However, I had a fight with Pedro, which made him cry and I get kicked out of the room for some minutes by the monitor.
Sometimes, the school provided us some fun activities. The best (and unique) was rafting: we went to the river and made a group of 5 (Hugo, Ludovic, Pablo, Nicholas and I), which would be led by another monitor. It was a kind of a boat race. There were about 15 boats, and ours left the last. We fought hard, and arrived before all. Of course, we had to cheat sometimes, by throwing water on other boats and pushing them to the walls with the oars. The last “activity” for fun was the disco on Friday night, in the gymnasium. As always, when our school tries to make something cool for students the result is always bad: 90% of the boys were playing soccer and we had to go to bed at 22. At least I played a volley game against M.Tramolay and M.Gally with Nicholas and I took revenge on my zero that I had in Physics one month before.
This was one of my best trips ever. Even though the place was awful, the bedroom was terrible (a small place for 16 persons can’t be good), the food was bland, the lessons we “learnt” weren’t interesting, the activities were boring, the weather was the worst possible, we managed not to be affected by these negative points and tried to have fun as most as we could. And we did it, we laughed a lot, we made unforgettable things, we didn’t give a damn to what other people said, we just wanted to have fun and forget the problems. Of course, we had some drawbacks: this trip made us have bad grades in Physics and be punished by the Headmaster for our bad behaviour. I think the school should try to find another place to host the students. If we compare this place to the one we stayed in Minas Gerais (2004) it would be like comparing water to wine: in MG we had a bedroom with 2 big floors, with 2 bathrooms for only 4 persons.
More images
1 – Roberto aka Precario in the bus 2 – Pablo, Nicholas and I (with inversion effect) 3 – Hugo in front of the bathroom 4 - Jens, Alex and I in the bus 5 – Ludo and Hugo talking 6 – Nicholas and Lucas 7 – Ludovic making a grimace 8 – Me making a grimace 9 – Me smelling Alex’s hair
