Siberia Is Where Tustin Student Found Herself--on Business End of an Oar

Nancy Wilson was looking for fun and adventure, so she went river rafting for 12 days on the icy white waters of the Katun River in Siberia.

“The biggest challenge for me was overcoming the sense that I was not good enough,” said Wilson, a Saddleback College graduate who plans to study computer science at UC Irvine. “The fact that I did it amazes me.”

Wilson said she told everyone, “I can do it,” but the 20-year-old from Tustin admitted, “I really was questioning myself. I really wasn’t sure of myself.”

Wilson and nine other U.S. youths joined 10 young Soviet students in a Soviet-American Rafting Youth Exchange to foster trust, cultural understanding and cooperative problem solving. Next year the exchange will take place in the United States.

“It was a chance of a lifetime, and I wasn’t going to miss it,” she said.

Wilson raised $3,500 to take the trip, earning most of it performing as a juggler, a skill she used to entertain the other rafters during relaxation time on the trip. She said she taught herself to juggle during her junior year in high school.

While computers may be her career goal, “I plan to see the world, and white-water rafting will give me that opportunity,” said Wilson, who took her first rafting and camping trip last summer.

The white-water rafting trip on the Siberian river was a new challenge for Wilson, whose only athletic training was running cross-country at Tustin High School.

Since her first rafting ride, Wilson has taken up wave skiing, sea kayaking and rock climbing. “The new things I do seem to lead to other adventurous things,” she said.

She is also training as a rafting guide: “I love the excitement and the danger. It’s invigorating to challenge yourself and work together with other people to stay alive.”

Although she thinks rafting through rapids is more of a mental than physical skill, Wilson said women still have to make up for some physical deficiencies in strength by using their bodies in a different way.

“You have to develop muscles you need,” said Wilson, who noted that half the people in her group training as white-water guides are women.

Besides the potential for danger, “It’s very exciting to challenge yourself and learn from the excitement,” she said. “People who raft learn how to rely on one another and how to read the water and the danger it can pose.”

The great challenge for rafters is to trust each other, Wilson added.

Named Piggy Sue, Hula Hog, Chop Sooey, Senor Chorizo and Oinkle Ham, they are among many others who are in intense training at Disneyland for its three-a-day pig races, a feature of the theme park’s state fair program.

“The pigs are treated with care before, during and after the races,” said spokesman Joe Aguirre, who noted that the winning pigs got cookies for their victory.

The opening race featured the heavily favored 4 Squeal Drive, who faltered and finished second in a stunning upset to the speedy Chop Sooey.

Pig o’ My Heart tiptoed to third place.

Dona and Harry E. McDonald of Huntington Beach were on a vacation trip that took them through Plains, Ga., where they attended a Sunday School class and learned of a volunteer housing project.

It was called Habitat for Humanity. Its goal was to build 20 houses in five days using volunteers to provide low-cost housing to replace substandard homes in the south section of Atlanta.

So the McDonalds, taken by the spirit of the project, joined the work party for five days on one of the houses being built.

You ain’t lived, the saying goes in San Clemente, until you’ve tasted the apple dumplings made and sold by the United Methodist Women of St. Andrews Church in San Clemente.

They spend an entire week each year in September making 1,200 apple dumplings, which they sell for $1.50 each as a major fund-raiser.

“It’s an entire week of hard work,” said spokeswoman Joyce Harvey of San Clemente. “While it’s a lot of fun, we wouldn’t want to do any more than a week of it.”

This is the seventh year of the project.

The taste treat consists of apples peeled and cored, filled with a cinnamon sauce and wrapped with a pastry.

The workers are popularly known as the “Apple Dumpling Gang.”