Sunday, August 12, 2012

My trip to a Leadership Camp in Bangalore


I am a Prefect of Oakridge International School Juniors. A trip to Bangalore was arranged by the school for the prefects. We went to a leadership training camp called Break Through. There was an interesting story behind the camp. The camp was `grew out of a rock! Who knows how it got there? On Thursday, the 2nd of August, at 5’o clock P.M, the prefects of the Jr. School assembled at the airport. The flight was at 7:45 P.M. We got our boarding passes and headed in. 

We did some shopping before we got on the plane. I bought chewing gum and mineral water. We got on the plane at around 7:30 P.M. We cheered as the plane took off. The plane was a one hour journey. We reached Bangalore International airport at around 8:45. The Oakridge International School Bangalore school Bus was waiting for us at the airport. We got on the bus and started to sing all kinds of songs.

 On the lane the camp was on, we saw a sign board saying- House of Holy Spirits. This seriously freaked us out because the time was around midnight. We reached Break Through past midnight. The first guide we met was a man named Sanjay. He told us that the “house of Holy spirits was a school! He explained the rules of the camp and then sent us to bed. The only thing that was kind of weird was that we had to wake up by 6:30 in the morning to take a bath with hot water. The Boys and Girls were separated. After we went to our dorms, we immediately fell asleep after the tiring journey. I woke up the next morning at 5:30 because I couldn’t sleep properly. 

After my friend Shishir woke up, he suggested we go for brushing. I agreed and we finished our brushing. After sometime, all of us were awake. It was 6:30 that time. We did our baths after brushing. I found the cleanest bathroom and took my bath there. After our baths, we came on the ground to play a game of soccer. Soon we were called for breakfast. After breakfast, we went to a conference hall. There we met our second guide, Sangeeta. Then we were divided into two groups for the whole trip. We named our groups as Prefects and Leaders. We played a few games in the conference hall. We also learnt the rules of the camp. After that, we were taken to a place that they called “low ropes”. There we had to do a little tight rope walking like 2 feet off the ground. We held on to ropes hanging off another rope above us. It was wonderful. We also crossed a bridge called “Shakira Bridge”. After that, we played on a trampoline there. Then we had lunch. 

After lunch, we had a water activity, where we had to balance a bucket full of water on our legs. I got soaked with a whole bucket of water! After that, it started to rain, so some of us started to play caroms and some of us hung out in the dorms. I stayed in the dorms for some time, and then went out to play badminton. After some time of playing badminton, we were called for a treasure hunt. The treasure hunt was fun. We ran here and there looking for clues. It was the prefect’s vs the leader’s teams.

 After the treasure hunt, we had dinner. After dinner, we sat at a campfire and danced to songs. I returned to the dorm in the middle because it was sort of boring. We slept after that. In the morning, after we had our baths, we realized that we were late for breakfast, so we rushed to breakfast. After breakfast, we got ready for the main event of the camp, the “High Ropes”. In high ropes, we would be raised about 40-60 feet off the ground and then we’d be doing the same thing we did on the low ropes except we are high off the ground and we were attached to a harness. 

We didn’t do the Shakira Bridge on the high ropes because it was too dangerous even with the harness. So we did something else. It was still a tight rope, but there was another rope parallel to the tight rope. The high ropes started with a tight rope going up. We had support on both sides. It was the hardest because we had to climb and balance at the same time. After that rope, we had to get on a platform where our guides were waiting to send us on the other challenge. First we had to do the tight rope with a rope parallel to it. After that, we did the tight rope with ropes hanging from another rope, and we had to take a rope and then switch to another rope. So we were back on the platform. There we had to wait for our turn on a zip line. Some people were scared to do it. I did it easily and it was very fun. We jumped off the platform and slid down a cord we were attached to.

 The whole high ropes were amazingly fun. After the high ropes, we had lunch. After lunch, we played a few sports. After that we had a snake show. Then we were called by Sangeeta for something fun. We were going to go into an artificial cave made by the camp people. We were going into the cave in partners. Some people went in groups of three. I, a boy named Saranga and another boy named Pranav were going together. Sangeeta explained that there were two emergency exits in the middle of the cave. When I, Saranga and Pranav entered, all we could see was blackness. I lead through the darkness. I decided to stay against one wall, so we could easily find our way. When we found the first emergency exit, Pranav got out because he couldn’t breathe. I and Saranga continued. On the way, we met a boy called Jaishnav and a boy called Sri Sai. We met them at the second emergency exit. We found the rest of the way and got out at the end of the cave. After that, we assembled in a gazebo to end the trip. 

The guides spoke to us, telling us how good we did the camp. We received certificates. We knew that it was time to leave. We packed up and said our farewells. We wrote our feedback down and left. We passed the house of holy spirits school and had a good laugh over it. We reached the airport at around 6:30 P.M. We were late to the airport. The flight was at 7:45. We sat down at our gate and waited. We were late to go to the flight too. The teachers were looking at the status and they saw our flight and it said- Final Call! We got so rushed from then. 

We went quickly to the gate and got on the bus which would take us to the flight. Soon we settled down and waited for the flight to take off. Soon we were up in the air and off to Hyderabad. The journey was full of turbulence and the plane kept shaking so much that we had to hold on to our handles to keep ourselves from banging our head on the seat in front of us. We soon landed in Rajiv Gandhi International airport. We were overjoyed when we reached the airport because we were back home. 

The trip was thrilling and very fun. I look forward to another trip like this.

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