By John Powell – GlobalTV.com

From a podcaster who analyzes the game to a fully-fledged player this season Aysha Welch has had a very eye-opening Survivor experience.

John Powell: Thanks for talking to us today. How are you feeling this morning?

Aysha Welch: I’m doing as well as someone he can be doing after a night like last night as much as I prepared for it and knew it was coming. I had October 2nd on my calendar knowing how I would feel but then obviously I didn’t know how it’s was going to feel actually watching it and experiencing the emotions all over again. I’m doing okay.

John Powell: I’ve been covering Survivor and Big Brother for a long time and I have always thought if I ever went on one of those shows I would do this and I wouldn’t do that. You went on the show with a lot of knowledge. How did that pan out?

Aysha Welch: I think you can equate it to being like a sports analyst, right? You have all of this knowledge. You could talk about it extensively for hours and hours and hours but you put yourself on a basketball court, put a ball in your hands. Now, what are you going to do? You have the knowledge. Go, do it. Go shoot! Go shoot from the logo!

I think the knowledge just helped me how to prepare in terms of like what skills I needed to hone in on. I wanted to make sure that I was strong. The last thing I wanted to do was be voted off first because I was the weakest on the tribe. I did not account for my tribe not caring about voting off like the strongest woman on the tribe.

I knew that I had to prep with puzzles. I prepped sleeping. I practiced sleeping on my back with no pillow for like a month. I did intermittent fasting. I did as much as I could do to prepare to have the skills that I thought would be necessary. It’s such a different animal talking about it as opposed to experiencing it.

John Powell: We saw your strategy talk with Teeny and Kishan. Why didn’t you go along with their plan?

Aysha Welch: It felt more of me versus Genevieve as opposed to me versus Sol. So when they presented this to me I was like: Okay, I don’t want it to be me so let’s weigh our options. You’ve got to understand this is the first time they’re approaching me with initiating strategy at this point. Up until then it’s just like we we’re talking about being locked in as a four what we could potentially do but this is our first time they are telling me…Here’s the plan. We think this should happen. I’m like: Let’s talk this through. I’m not just trying to throw a different plan out there. If your fears are Rome playing his idol on Genevieve or himself, let’s just make sure he plays it on himself.

That’s the only guarantee we can have and then we can go after Genevieve. If that’s not your real fear then then something else is at play here because if you are willing to get rid of Sol then I understand my position on this tribe. I’m at the bottom. If we get rid of Saul I’m at the bottom. It’s you four against me.
What they were trying to pitch was: It’s us three against those two and I’m like: No, this is a tribe of very clear duos. It was me and Sol, Kishan and Teeny, Genevieve and Rome. Like very apparent duos. Everyone knew Kishan and Teeny were in the middle. They were the most liked of all six of us. Those were the dynamics.

I’m like: If you’re really going to get rid of my duo you’re not in with us…I’m left with nothing. Also knowing that Rome potentially has an advantage why on Earth would you leave Genevieve in this game where now those two have an additional thing? They don’t even need you…It just didn’t make sense to me.

John Powell: At Tribal Council you made a pitch, a statement to someone to follow through on what they promised. Who were you speaking to and why?

Aysha Welch: That was my final plea trying to get Rome to play the idol on himself. Right before we went to tribal Teeny and Kishan told me: Look, we’re locked in with doing the vote three to one. We’re fine doing three votes on Genevieve and we’re good with that. I said: Okay, what I’m going to try to do is make sure Rome uses the idol on himself. So anything I say at Tribal is going to be to make sure that.

I told Genevieve right before tribal: Hey, me and Sol got a third vote. I’m not going to call out who it is but I don’t want you to be left out. We’re trying to vote for Rome. I was hoping she would take it back to Rome…I hoped Rome was spooked enough…I hoped that Kishan and Teeny knew that I was all in with them.

John Powell: Tell us how hard it was to play on a such a smaller tribe.

Aysha Welch: It was incredibly difficult no matter how you you write it up, no matter how much you prepare…On Day One Teeny recognized me. I was like: Okay, now I have to work with Teeny and then you have Rome who is completely uninterested in getting to know me. I’m like: How are we going to work together? We don’t have any personal relationship. Like every conversation with him was like an interview. He would never turn it back on me…So I was like, okay, I can’t work with Rome but now at this point I know Rome is close with Genevieve. The only time I ever hear Rome whisper is when he’s talking to Genevieve.

My only option was obviously Saul who we hit it off from Day One. We got so close, which I wish more of it was seen on the episodes but we were so close…We became really lose.

Okay, I have to work with Teeny and obviously working with Saul because I just trust him completely. Kishan is a nice four. I’m slowly getting to know him. I put all of my eggs in that basket which is why I think I maybe just overestimated, overestimated my position with Teeny. I think that’s really where my downfall was.

John Powell: Obviously we cannot see all that happens on the island. What do you wish they would have shown about your Survivor journey?

Aysha Welch: I’m glad they saw the social dynamics of one tribe member specifically but I do wish we got to see more of just the on the day-to-day dynamics because I think it made it seem is was very clear cut. On the episode they wanted to vote Sol. I was unwilling to vote Sol so they voted me. You didn’t need my vote. Don’t go trying to blame me because I failed your loyalty test by not wanting to vote out the fourth person.

What incentive did I have to vote out our fourth member for two other people that they knew that I didn’t have a working relationship with? It just didn’t make sense. Sol was such a huge part of us winning when we did. Have you seen the man? He’s so strong.

John Powell: I would be remiss if I didn’t ask about Canadian Genevieve. What were your impressions of her?

Aysha Welch: With Genevieve it was like we couldn’t get past the surface level. It was just for some reason, anytime we had conversations, it was just like: Oh, how did you sleep? How’s the water feeling?

I wanted to get to know her more but it was just for some reason we couldn’t connect. I was trying to figure out why we couldn’t and I was just trying to figure her out. I’m like: She’s just not this nice Canadian. That’s not what would get her cast on Survivor.

I remember talking about it like in my confessionals. I felt like Genevieve was hiding something because nothing else makes sense. She’s a lawyer and I did not know that. So I was like: I feel like she’s hiding something and I do specifically remember her saying something one day about the Canadian justice system compared to the US and I was like: Who knows that thing to know? I was like I don’t think I can make the comparison on the US side but it was just like I knew she was hiding something and I didn’t know what.

I would watch her with other people. I’d see her have extensive conversations with Teeny I’d see her have extensive conversations with Kishan and Rome. This was so odd. I don’t know what the disconnect was. It became like a challenge for me.

John Powell: You’ve commentated on the show. You’ve watched the show. What are some of the biggest surprises of actually having to go and play the game and be on the island? What is your takeaways from all that, not only about the show, but also about yourself?

Aysha Welch: I learned that I was way more capable of than I gave myself credit for. For the longest time I thought Survivor was way too hard. Don’t get me wrong, it is hard but I thought it was way too hard for me. I’ve never camped. I get hangry if I don’t have lunch by 11. I felt there’s no way. But I think I finally got to a point in my life where I just have accomplished enough that I was like content.

The show itself, there’s a lot of downtime but then there isn’t because you want to talk about the game. You also need to live life, right? You need to go get firewood. You need to go make sure that you’re finding enough coconut so we have breakfast, lunch and dinner of coconut and coconut water. I think just trying to figure out that balance of when I’m going to talk game, when I’m going to just live life, get to know people personally, and then when the sun goes down. It is dark like it is so dark and you’re so exhausted.

What I didn’t think about before was how exhausted you be every day and how your cognitive ability would be impacted because you can’t think because you’re not feeding your brain.

Survivor 47 Fantasy Tribe