Coast to Coast Week Without Walls

For my week without walls trip I chose to go on the biking trip to Arugam Bay. This trip was an amazing adventure and one of the most challenging weeks of my life. We began our week with a multiple hour bus ride to our first hotel. We stopped half way through to practice our cycling.

The fourth day forced me to undertake new challenges and develop new skills. We rode sixty miles that day. It was by far the longest distance that I had ever cycled. It was extremely difficult and many times I wanted to quit. However, I stuck through it until the very end. This was extremely rewarding. I developed my fitness skills through this exercise. My legs were sore each day of the trip. However, each day we learned to push ourselves even harder in order to reach our destination. 

One of the many fun activities we did was going to the elephant orphanage. This is a very famous site. We learned about why the elephants were there and the goals of the orphanage. I believe that it is a great project and responsible for changing the lives of many elephants.

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One day of the trip the teachers asked for volunteers to go to a local school to help the children with bike safety. I volunteered along with three other OSC students. The teachers taught us how to assemble and place the lights onto the front and backs of the bikes. The children were grateful for our help. Though we only made a small contribution, the kids will have a safer ride to and from school each day. This activity dealt with an issue of global importance; poverty. It was very difficult to only do this much for the students. Many of the student had broken breaks and handle bars.It made us all think about how fortunate we are. But what we thought about most is how we could do more or how we could use what we learned that day to improve our own community service groups at OSC.

The picture below is from an extremely windy day where we biked 50km. On this day collaborating with other cyclists was key. We created a system that lessened the effects of the wind. We would cycle in a lie so that only the first person would receive the obstacle of the wind. We chose the strongest cyclist to take this role.

On the second to last day we made lunch as a group. We collaborated together while planning and initiating the meal making process. I was assigned the job of gutting the prawns. This was a disgusting and unpleasant job. However, the prawns were the center of our meal so we all had to do our part.We all worked together throughout the meal serving process to create an organized way of distributing the food fairly.At the end of the meal we ensured that we left a clean area behind us. The food was surprisingly good!