By Jayden Norrish
Earlier this year I went on the first youth horizon course which was held by Outward Bound and adapted to suit teenagers with special needs. This was a sponsored course organized by Outward Bound.
We got up early and travelled to the Auckland Airport where we met with Danielle from Recreate and four other kids that were coming on the course.
It was my first time on the plane without Mum and Dad, but it was fun I slept the whole trip to Blenheim.
When we landed, we had to travel in a van to Picton were we met with another group of five kids from Wellington.
We all made our way to Outward Bound camping ground in a boat, where we unpacked our bags and made our beds.
We met the instructors who were going to be helping us on the course and had a tour around Outward Bound.
I stayed four nights and five days there and did lots of fun activities like, sailing, kayaking, swimming, making fires, high ropes, cooking, carving a knife from a stick, and even spent a little bit of time in the bush by myself to think about things.
Every morning we got up at 6.30am and had to go on a run and then a swim before we could have breakfast.
I liked the sailing and kayaking the best and saw stingrays and jellyfish in the water.
I did not like the high climbing ropes in the trees.
Another fun thing we did was bombs off the wharf into the water.
The people were nice at Outward Bound, and we had yummy food like burgers and fish for dinner which we all had to help cook. We even got dessert (Apple Strudel).
After dinner we had to do dishes and then went on walks along the beach. Some nights we had a fire and sat around this.
Five days came to an end very fast to get home we went in a waka and paddled all the way to Picton where we said our goodbyes to friends we had met.
I would love to go again as I had so much fun.
