WWW : Dryzone "The Paradox"

"The Paradox"- As Mr. Lockwood called it is a accurate name to how our trip went. We visited the dryzone of Sri Lanka which consists of the upper half (Trincomalee and Anaradapura) and it was completely wet! We spent two nights going to sleep while listening to rain and had to climb Sigiriya's sister rock by the name of Pidurantalagala while trying not to slip.

Despite the rain though the trip was amazing. It consisted of night walks, open-jeeps rides through the city, climbing and some relax time at a 5 star hotel. Throughout this trip there were many learning outcome addressed.

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth.

Undertaken new challenges.

Worked collaboratively with others

Considered the ethical implications of their actions

So first off there were many instances on the trip where all we did was talk and get to know each other. In this time we got to know about everyones likes and dislikes, phobias and whatnot. This really showed when we were walking up through a forrest like area and you could clearly see a difference in personalities. One group would be talking and making jokes about everything around them while another group would be climbing up and jumping through rocks trying to make everything a competition. There was even a group that spend 80% of their time playing with stray temple dogs and giving them names.

There was a lot of challenging activities in this trip and its understandable when not everyone can do it. However the amount of people in our group who did things that they would usually never do was amazing. Climbing Pidurantalagala was a daunting task for even me. Taha even rapped on the way back which i'm sure was out of his comfort zone but it was one of the highlights of the trip.

There were a lot of instances where we had to work together with the whole group. For example trying to work through managing our luggage and trying to make sure we all make it to the bus in time. There was really no times when we were separated into smaller groups to work on anything since the total group itself was pretty small.

We had limitless discussions on ethics and it was really interesting since we all had a different religion and different mindsets to other religions. For example some of us would go to a temple just for the site seeing while others would go to take in the ideas of the religion and the culture(Not necessarily take up the religion). This seemed to be an issue but out late night evaluation sessions where we just talked as a group really helped in educating the whole group of the matter. There was also multiple discussions of free will and different dimensions that was inspired by Stephen Hawking book "The Grand Design"

Overall this trip was an amazing experience and I need to thank Mrs. Fert and Mr.Lockwood for planning it and actually making it more fun that any of the other trips in my opinion.

Not going scuba diving like we were promised was a bummer though :P