By Alexandra Wang

My family and I were making our way down the hill to get to the river, carrying our raft. While we were walking, I thought of all the things that might happen to me — falling out or accidentally hitting a rock and going flying. All of those things, I was scared of. It was going to be a very long time, going through that river with my family.

The scariness of the rafting hung over my head like a dark cloud. When we finally came to the river, it was wide and long, the distant rapids splashing against the other rafts. The smell of fresh water came into my nose. My mom assured me that this would be the time of my life, but I didn’t believe her when I saw someone get hit by a rock. His boat flipped over and he came up, spluttering water out of his mouth. And, oh boy, this was not going to be the time of my life.

We got into our raft on the river. My mom said, for the first 5 minutes, we could get out of the boat and swim. I said I didn’t want to, but my sister saw the chance to make me scared and quickly pushed me out. My sister and my mom laughed their heads off. “Ha ha,” I grumbled. But, with the feel of the water, I quickly came to my senses that this was an amazing experience. I always liked the water and ocean, but I never thought of swimming in a river because I thought I would be caught by a strong current. Even though I was a competitive swimmer. Then, I quickly felt the water getting faster, so I asked to get in the boat, and my mom lifted me out.

We rowed out through the river, the waves getting bigger and the rocks coming out more frequently. We came over to a class 10 rapid, which, in other words, was a SUPER FAST rapid. We were more focused on getting through it, so we pushed through, but we didn’t notice a big rock right in front of us. Thus flung us out, me being the lightest almost flew out completely, and the water almost submerged our raft. I lay on my back at the side of the raft, scrambling to get inside. After that, the rapids became calmer. The manual, which the front desk gave us along with all our gear, said that when the water became calmer, I could get out and swim again. So I did, but instead of doing so reluctantly, I cannonballed, making a humongous splash in the river. The big splash I created covered my mom and my sister with water. I laughed so hard, “HAHAHA!”

When the river got completely calm, we finally reached the end of our trip. As we were making our way back to the house, I thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t that bad after all.’ It was pretty fun and hilarious with my family there. It would be a good thing to do as a yearly activity, like we do with skiing every winter. Maybe I could convince my mother to let us do this every summer.