I was one of the lucky students who got a scholarship to attend the Outward Bound 21 day Mind, Body and Soul course from the 23 September to 13 October. As cliche as it sounds it was the most life changing experience I have ever had.

I had the most nerve wracking boat ride from Picton to Anakiwa (where Outward Bound is located at the top of the South Island) with around 80 other people of similar age. We had a warm welcome once we arrived and got sorted into our watches. Meeting 12 other people was a very challenging thing for me personally, but on the second day we started on a grunting three day tramp. After the shared tramping experience, my watch became my OB family.

It felt like we never stopped, straight after our tramp we were out on a two day sailing trip and got to sleep on the boat … if you could call it sleep! After we got back from the sailing trip we unpacked, then all of a sudden our instructors came and told us to re-pack for a two day kayaking trip and we leave at 6:30 in the morning! For me this was okay because it meant we got to miss PT (6:20am personal training workout, 3.2km run then a jump in the cold sea! I will never forget the freezing cold hose shower).

The days after the kayaking trip seemed to go by pretty fast and it had already been two weeks. It started to dawn on us all that we only had one week left with each other so we stopped any form of complaining and got down to the task we had come for, and carried out our experience pure to the end. I had an unfortunate encounter with my asthma which meant I could not go on the four day tramping expedition but I got a different experience by staying back at Anakiwa by fixing lots and lots of tent poles, cutting seven big roast chickens (and being a vegetarian made it quite interesting), doing ‘The Life Run’ and meeting a few other cool people. Myself and another watch mate, who also couldn’t go on the tramp, got to take a jet boat to Endeavour Inlet where the rest of our watch was waiting to get on the sailboat for another two days. That night I was the lucky one that got to sleep on the oars, so comfortable!

Somehow it was already Day 19! That night a bunch of watches gathered around and we all cheered on a guy getting his hair shaved off at 10:30pm, you could tell we didn’t have long left when stuff like that starts happening.

Day 20, the half marathon… This was actually a pretty good run apart from the last 3km which felt like the longest 20 minutes of my life. After that we all had a great sense of achievement and were all hyped for the concert night. My watch re-worded all the words to the song ‘TikTok’ and we got dressed up in ‘gangster’ clothing. It was hilarious evening but after we all had a big dance with the instructors we got the emotional final night hit.

Our last morning was filled with cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning, and lots of tears. Saying goodbye to a place which has changed me so much was very sad, but saying goodbye to the people who have seen me change and had been with me through every step was even harder. The experience was one I will remember for the rest of my life and I would highly recommend this to anyone that ever has a chance to attend.