“We must take adventures in order to know where we belong” – Maria Stoyanova
I don’t really know how to start this post because this is my last week without walls adventure. Around this time, next year, we would be stressing out and panicking about our mocks in DP 2. WWW has always been an adventure on its own and bonding with my friends makes it even more special and this one wasn’t different to the rest… I can assure you that this was one of my favourites.
We started our journey at 6 in the morning and of course, there wouldn’t be a WWW without starting out early in the morning. I finally met all my friends and as expected, they all looked like they didn’t want to be here. What can I say? Teenagers hate the early morning light. We started by seperating ourselves into two vans/busses and each bus had its own atmosphere. One being full of sleepyheads and the other one, god knows what happened to that one. I’m grateful that I was put into the calmer bus and I slept for almost the entire 4-hour ride. We were then greeted by Yapahuwa, a small rock fortress above a temple in the Nuwareliya area. After sharpening our photo skills at Yapahuwa, we then travelled to Pidurangala, a rock as big as two football fields at the top. When we got to the top, it was undoubtedly the best view I have seen in Sri Lanka, this was true because we got to see Sigiriya from where we stood and had a 360 view of the highland4 plains.
The second day brought us to a hiking adventure that didn’t go so well. As we were heading up the path of that rainforest we were encountered by a massive problem. Our teachers Mr Lockwood and Mrs Desline got lost on our way up, with perfect timing we were then introduced to pouring rain, accompanied by lightning and thunder. Most of us had to stay put and three, including me, had to search for our teachers. That was our very little adventure on its own. We eventually found them and headed back to the St. Andrew’s as we could not have continued our hike to the bad weather.
The rest of our trip was looking for frogs and reptiles during the day and during the night and of course birds too, what would this trip be without Mr Lockwood bird watching but nevertheless I think most of us started to enjoy the sport. I’ve always enjoyed bird watching and spotting different ones, its a good way to pay attention to our surroundings and paying attention to the small details.
To sum it all up, I’ve learnt so much in the span of 5 days with this bunch. I’ve understood the value of teamwork even more and this is why I love week without walls. Week without walls teaches us things that we cannot learn in class and shows us that there are more important things in life than school, it also provides us with unmatched outdoor experience to students hence why it being called “Week without walls”. I just want to give a shoutout to everyone involved in the Highlands trip, from all my friends to the guides and all the way to the teachers for making this my favourite week without walls and making my last unforgettable.