This year,  I was put into a “Week Without Walls” group which I was not so fond of, or so I thought. The purpose of these trips which you take every year is to better expose OSC students to our host nation, Sri Lanka, and its varied cultural and national treasures. Also, once you reach your MYP 5 and DP 1 years, you combine to go on 4 different Micro Trips to many different areas of the country, in order to work on collaborating with new peers in your age gap. This really helps students work on breaking out of their comfort zone and developing new relationships. Fortunately, I was selected to go down south, to various different areas of southern parts of Sri Lanka. This trip was something that I was looking forward to going on, although I was not so happy with the people I was selected to go with as I was not familiar with 90% of the students. Nevertheless, I told myself that it could be good, and to make the best out of the experience.

After going on the trip now, I can say it was significantly better than I thought and new relationships were formed throughout the trip. It really opened up new collaboration skills and I become more self-aware as to how rich in diversity Sri Lanka is.

For our first destination of the trip, we arrived at a temple called Mulkirigala Raja Maha Vihara Temple.

This temple was quite a cool experience overall because it was a temple that I had never been to before even though I have traveled to many temples in my time in Sri Lanka. This temple was located on the top of a rock, so as we climbed up the rock gradually, we kept on discovering and revealing all of the temple’s treasures, like cave paintings and Buddha statues. Once we reached the top of the temple, there was an amazing view of the tree line of the Sri Lankan rainforests and small villages scattered throughout the landscape.

After, completing the climb to the top we made our way to the first hotel of the trip called Back and Beyond Kahandamordara. We were staying there for 2 nights and there were many activities planned for the upcoming days. That evening, we had all the time to relax and swim in the pool, and as the evening rolled into the night we were blessed to watch the beautiful sunset from across the marsh with a beautiful reflection on the water.

(Photo Credits – Ethan Grandbois)

The next morning came and we woke ready to travel to the second temple of the trip. This temple was not as exciting as the first one and as midday came around, it started to rain profusely. So we had to turn back and head back to the hotel. After this disappointing visit, we had more excitement coming into the evening as we had a turtle beach walk, where we could hopefully see turtles laying their eggs. As we arrived at the turtle sanctuary, I was not excited and tired; we waited and waited until finally after an hour we got the call that one of their men found a turtle on the beach. It was an amazing experience.

The next morning we were traveling to our second hotel in the rainforest, it was called the Rain Forest Eco-Lodge. The hotel was super unique, as we were staying in shipping containers lined with bamboo, and we were surrounded by nothing but rainforest. For those two days were really dove into the different areas of the rainforest, exploring views, plants, animals, and waterfalls. It was a great experience, and I preferred this half of the trip much more than the other.

The temperature was also cool, especially at the night so we got to wear longer attire and it was very cozy; in the evenings we came all washed and clean into the lounge to have some afternoon tea which was one of my favorite parts of each day as we could relax after all of the activity we had done previously during the day.