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College Life – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin, welcome back to the commentary for the conversation College Life.

So AJ and I actually met in Athens, Georgia, Athens being the college town that University of Georgia is in. But AJ’s older than me so I was still in college. I was in my senior year or my last year at the University of Georgia taking a class that was actually at the local hospital and AJ happened to be volunteering there at the hospital so we met.

So AJ and I have known each other for a long time. He had already been out of college a few years at that point.

Anyway, we met and we quickly realized that we liked doing outdoor activities, meaning going hiking, going camping. So as AJ mentioned in the conversation, one of the things that he liked about the University of Georgia were the clubs and the organizations.

Well, there was one organization called GORP and the letters in GORP stand for Georgia Outdoor Recreation Program. And they would do all kinds of trips, outdoor trips.

So they would go… They would take students as well as non-students, they would take them rock climbing or white water rafting or hiking or camping, just many different things, canoeing.

So AJ and I decided to go on a trip with this group GORP and we decided to go caving. So let me tell you about our experience caving.

We actually got two of our friends to go with us and then we’re with these other students as well as non-students, because like I said, people from the community could go on these trips also. And AJ had actually been caving before.

Let me first explain what a cave is. A cave is an opening in the ground or in the side of a mountain. So it can be really large or it can be a small space. Or if you go inside, it could start off being small and then there’s areas where it gets bigger, larger. It can vary. It can be very different.

So AJ had actually been caving before. Another word for caving is called spelunking.

And so he knew what to expect. I’d never been before and I don’t think that our two friends had either.

But because AJ had been before he knew that we were probably going to get very dirty. So we went to a store that sold cheap army clothing and AJ and I bought these what’s called a jumpsuit. It’s a one-piece, it was pants as well as a top but it’s combined so it’s one piece of clothing.

And they were this army green color. So we were wearing those and then we’d also bought some gloves. And then the group, GORP, supplied us with these hard hats that had these headlamps on them. A headlamp is a flashlight that you wear on your head.

So I actually have a hardhat here. This was to protect our head. It’s a hard plastic. And then we had a light, like this, that they put on the hat. And then we were wearing gloves to protect our hands.

Now I don’t have that. This isn’t what I actually wore. I just happened to have this and thought that I would put it on for you. I don’t have that green outfit anymore. But the gloves were really good to protect our hands.

And I actually have a picture of AJ and I that I will try to embed it after this commentary so look for that. It’s a picture of he and I coming out of the cave at the end.

Okay, so I’m excited. I don’t know what to expect. We went up to the northern part of Georgia where there’s mountains and if I remember correctly this particular cave was in the side, the entrance was in the side of a hill. Not, y’know, a small mountain in other words.

And there was actually, I didn’t remember this, but I was looking at my pictures and we had taken a picture of the entrance. There was actually water coming down at the entrance, so immediately going in and coming out at the end, we got wet.

We go in with the group and we’re with a guide as well. The person that was guiding us had experience in this cave so he knew where we were going to be going.

We needed those headlamps though, those flashlights, to see because it was dark inside. So we go in with our group and I remember in the very beginning, well, let me explain, too.

There’s two types of caves. There’s vertical caves and there’s horizontal caves. We were entering into a vertical cave which means vertical is going across like this. Horizontal is up and down.

So we were actually going into the cave. We started off walking. We had to kind of bend down low because the ceiling or the top of the cave was a little low. But we were actually walking in horizontally.

If you enter a vertical cave, you actually go down in, you rappel in. It’s called rappelling. You go down in using a rope and someone’s lowering you down in.

That’s a little more difficult to do so I didn’t want to do a cave like that. I knew you needed experience with rappelling and probably with caving as well.

So we did, you know… this trip was a horizontal cave, so I remember going in and there were all so… it was really dark inside and cool. The air was cool and it was really moist because there’s water that comes in from the ceiling.

So because of this water, we were actually seeing a lot of stalactites… stalactites, it’s a little difficult for me to say, which are formations of the rock of the cave, the ceiling.

So water comes in through the ceiling and over many, many years it starts to shape the ceiling in a way of bringing it down so it looks like an icicle.

Stalactites are pointed. They look like icicles, the shape of them look like icicles, but they’re actually then, y’know, they’re the formations of the rock that the cave is made up of.

And then there are stalagmites which come from the ground of the cave and they’re formed from water coming from the ceiling of the cave dripping down onto the floor and so over many, many years the rock on the floor starts to form upward. And they are more rounded or flat.

So we saw stalagmites and stalactites. It can actually be really beautiful. They can have kind of a shining crystal look to them.

And I remember at one point we’re in this area, it was really like a large room. And there was a part where you could climb up and then there was a round opening and you could slide down this part of the rock.

So we all took a turn doing that, those who wanted to. That was quite fun. So I was thinking, wow, this is really fun. It’s not so bad.

Y’know, I didn’t really know what to expect but I did know that some people going into a cave might get claustrophobic because it’s dark. They don’t know where they’re going.

All was going well. Then towards the end, we’re walking in a line following each other. AJ was behind me. I noticed that the ceiling of the cave started getting a little lower so we’re starting to have to bend down as we’re walking. Eventually we were crawling.

The ceiling got so low that we had to just get down and crawl like a baby on our hands and knees. So AJ’s behind me. I’m in front. There’s other people in front of me.

The ceiling was so low that, remember we had those hard hats on. AJ at one point said something to me. Remember, he’s behind me. He said something to me and I turned my head because I couldn’t hear him and he said it again and I answered him. I don’t remember what he said or what he was asking me.

Anyway, I started to turn my head back to the front so I could continue crawling forward and I couldn’t turn my head. It had gotten so low at this point, I believe we were almost on our stomachs, having to pull ourselves along.

I couldn’t move my head back around to the front. So I couldn’t see where I was going and I got a little nervous, a little anxious. And AJ was trying to calm me down, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

And he had to shine his light around me so it would shine out in front of me so he could direct me on how to go because it was black, total black.

So I don’t remember how long that lasted but it was, yeah, as I said I was a little nervous. So finally, we came out of that and were able to actually stand up again and it was a very, very good experience. I’m glad that I did it.

And like I said, I want to have a picture, two pictures, one of AJ, one of myself, coming out of the cave through the water. I think we probably looked pretty dirty.

And so look for those pictures. This place that we went to actually was a few hours from Athens where University of Georgia was, where we were living. So we actually camped that night with the group, which was also fun. We got to camp, sleep in tents.

And it was overall a really good experience. I was actually just talking to AJ earlier on the phone about that. It brought back good memories looking at these pictures and he was talking about how we should have… we should do something like that again soon.

It’s also funny, I was looking at the pictures and I noticed people in our group were wearing jeans and nice shirts and then here were… here’s AJ and I in these dirty, or not dirty, but these green army jumpsuits, y’know, one piece of clothing suits that we were wearing.

And I’m so glad that he had been caving before and he knew that we would get really dirty so I didn’t care about getting that outfit dirty but I think a lot of those people, they had no idea. They’d never been caving before.

So anyway, that was my experience, my first and only time caving and maybe we’ll do it again, who knows.

If there’s any outdoor activities that you enjoy doing or that you’ve done in the past, you haven’t done it again but you had a really good time, you should share on the social site with us. We’d love to hear about that.

Alright, this concludes my commentary for the conversation College Life and I’ll see you next month.