We started off our DP journey by literally throwing ourselves out of our comfort zones in the classroom, and into the wilderness where we braved bold jumps, waking down a face of a cliff and battling the rapids as if they were our arch nemesis. Even when all of that was happening, us, the DP1 students never failed to sing, dance and socialize with one another. You could perhaps call this a trip and a fun event, but I think it truly is an orientation for my life as now I know the importance of what I value now, which is the relationships I create. This trip truly was ‘An Orientation for Life’.

Day #1

I suppose you could say we woke up pretty early and was ready to leave school campus for a day of action and get ready to go straight into our first activity which is white water rafting. This day was based on activity in CAS.

(Will Duncan)

this was particularly nerve-racking as this is the first time I have attempted anything like this and I didn’t want to let down my team. and I’m pretty sure I didn’t as we, the Brownies were the most spirited of them all, we were on the only red boat.

(Will Duncan)

After the rapids, we hiked to another location to go canyoning where we jumped and slid down rocks and boy was that nerve-racking. But it was the most exhilarating experience I have ever gone through and I would not change it for the world, even though I landed on my back by trying to do a front flip.

(Will Duncan)

After canyoning, we floated down to Borderlands camp where we took time to discuss the day, talk about our values and what we appreciate and to socialize in general.

(Will Duncan)

Lights out were by 10pm and we were ready for an enlightening second day!

Day #2

This day we focused more on creativity from CAS and also TOK. On this day we hiked for a long time to arrive at a cave, where we drew maps of our journey to the cave and this was quite the challenge as I interpreted it to be an abstract path of a long road, which it was.

After we finished the TOK lesson we explored the caves and we were given the story of the cave by our TOK teachers, on what we reflected by ourselves for the next coming few days.

(Will Duncan)

 (Ian Lockwood)

When the exploring was concluded we went to the top of a waterfall from which we proceeded to abseil down! This was an experience I had had before in England, however, it was still fun nonetheless.

 (Ian Lockwood)

After this we went back to the Borderlands camp where we took time to discuss the day, talk about our values and what we appreciate and to socialize in general like the previous night.

Also, like the first-day lights out were by 10pm and we were ready for an enlightening third day!

Day #3

This day we focused more on service from CAS. This day was also our travelling day back to school so we tried to savour each moment dearly. Our main task for the day was to interview the locals which a group of three people was assigned to. My group got a shopkeeper, where we proceeded to ask him for his details and if anything has affected his business.

After the interview, we got onto the bus and packed our bags into it and went back to school. I’m pretty sure that every student on that trip would agree that it changed them and made our grade closer than ever. It truly was ‘An Orientation for Life’.